The USDA released its Prospective Plantings report last week.
We got a recap from Jon Driedger with LeftField Commodity Research.
"USDA showed farmers expecting to plant fewer acres of corn and soybeans than what was expected, so plantings will be up, but the increase will smaller than what the market was anticipating and so really the market spiked higher in response to that with the idea that maybe, at least from USDA's initial estimate, that the U.S. farmer will actually not put in quite as much corn and soybean as had been thought leading up to the report."
Driedger also touched on wheat acres.
"Wheat acres actually, for all-wheat, was up a bit in the U.S., where as corn and soybeans had a bullish surprise, actually wheat would have been maybe a little bit on the bearish side and part of that is a little bit of an increase in wheat. Where there was a little bit of a surprise is the fact that winter wheat acres were up...from what had been expected. Unlike the spring planted crops, the winter wheat acres actually were initially estimated in January, so there had been maybe a number already put in by USDA prior to that and they revised that higher. So that was a little bit of a surprise."
He also touched on spring wheat plantings in Western Canada.
"Spring wheat plantings will be down in the U.S. this coming year, they will also be down in Western Canada and so where the broader wheat complex may be seeing some higher plantings, spring wheat specifically will be a little bit lower and not just in the U.S. but also here in Western Canada. As you drill down into some of the various classes of wheat...there's maybe some shuffling of some of the different plantings and types of wheats and how that will shake out here for the coming year."
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