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Economist takes early look at USDA June acreage
A University of Missouri ag economist expects a light increase for corn acreage in the USDA’s June acreage report that comes out near the end of next/the month.
Ben Brown is with MU’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute.
“I’m putting it just under a million acre increase in June,” he said. “Which, some private analysts are expecting somewhere around 96 million acres of corn which would be a five million acre increase almost.”
He tells Brownfield if the report is closer to his guess of a nearly 1-million-acre corn increase, it would be bullish for the market.
Brown speculates that recent stints of bearish runs for corn could be based on the expectation of a larger increase in USDA’s estimated corn acreage.
“The problem I have is where do the acres come from,” he said. “Here in the Plains and the western Midwest, we’re not hearing a lot of wheat termination. Wheat termination tends to lead into corn.”
Brown says he doesn’t expect farmers to jump from wheat to corn because the same factors hurting wheat yields, like drought, will also hurt corn. He points to high fertilizer costs as another deterrent.
