Fundamentally Speaking

By Joel Karlin
Contributing Analyst

Even though the calendar still says it is March, winter continues to cover much of the Midwest leading to concerns that some intended corn acreage might not be planted.

This may result in increased soybean acreage from what initial figure is given by the USDA in their Prospective Plantings report.

This piece looks at the change in planted U.S. soybean area from the end of March intentions report to the final acreage figures given in the annual crop production report released in January.

This change is measured in both 1000 acres and percent.

Soybeans are put in the ground after corn so it is commonly thought that a quicker than normal planting pace for corn could ostensibly lead to falling soybean acreage as producers often chose to sow some extra corn acres at the expense of soybeans.

Conversely, delayed corn plantings due to wet and cold weather can lead to larger than expected soybean seedings given that this crop can be put in the ground much later than corn.

There is also a lot of double cropped soybean acreage that is planted after the soft red winter (SRW) wheat harvest in areas of the Southern Midwest and Delta though a late SRW harvest can limited the amount of double cropped soybean acreage.

A review of the data shows no clear-cut connection as even with last year’s very fast corn planting pace that did lead to a 1.3 million acre increase from the March intentions to the final acreage number, soybean planted area last year rose by the largest amount ever on both an acreage and percent basis from these two reports, up 3.30 million or 4.5% respectively.

On the other hand, in the very slow corn planting year of 2011, soybean acreage actually fell by 1.633 million or 2.1%.

Similar to corn, the largest decline in soybean planted area from the March intentions to the final acreage figures was in 1983.

(KA)

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