There’s a general consensus that corn planted acres will see a jump this year, but to what degree and from where? Tanner Ehmke is the lead economist for grains and oil seeds at CoBank, and he says the rise could be significant.
“Where we’re at right now, we’re forecasting corn to be up a little over 4% from last year at 94 and a half million. But if we continue the current trajectory on prices with corn versus these other commodities, especially cotton and grain sorghum, we could easily see corn planted acres go north of 95 million.
As expected, most of those acres, says Ehmke, would come from soy.
“Obviously, there will be some shift out of soybeans. We anticipate soybean acreage to fall to about 84 million down from a touch over 87 million last year. But corn is also going to be picking up acres from a lot of other crops that have not kept pace with the rally we’ve seen in corn prices over the last several weeks.”
He predicts one of those commodities will be cotton.
“We’re anticipating cotton acres to drop to about 10 point 3, million acres down from 11.17 last year. Now I will point out that the National Cotton Council came out with their own farmer-based survey, calling for cotton acres to drop even further than what we’re saying. They’re gonna they’re saying that cotton acres may drop down to 9.6 million. That’s a half a million under where we’re at. Just a phenomenal shift there.”
Also look for farmers to transition out of sorghum in the heartland.
“Kansas and the surrounding areas are really struggling to find a way to profit on Milo when there’s no Chinese demand. And so we’re currently forecasting grain sorghum or milo acres to drop to about 5.7 down from 6.3 million last year. I’ve heard some out in the private industry also forecasting that grain sorghum can drop to as low as 5 million.”
Ehmke also expects a small shift to corn from spring wheat.