U.S. soybean acres expected to surpass corn in 2022

The USDA released its Prospective Plantings report on Thursday.

Dan Basse is president of AgResource Company in Chicago, Illinois.

"This crop year, it looks like U.S. farmers almost totally responded to input costs, whether it be fertilizer, chemicals, or herbicides. If you look at it, corn of course was the big loser. 89.5 million acres of corn is what the intentions showed us, that was down a little over 3.8 million acres from last year. The gains all went to soybeans at 91 million acres and when we look at combined corn and soybean acreage, we're down about 100,000 from last year, which gives credence to that peak U.S. farmland theory that's going around. U.S. wheat acreage 47.4 million was up a little bit from last year but again 400,000 acres below expectations."

The following is from the USDA Prospective Plantings report:

Corn planted area for all purposes in 2022 is estimated at 89.5 million acres, down 4 percent or 3.87 million acres from last year. Compared with last year, planted acreage is expected to be down or unchanged in 43 of the 48 estimating States.

Soybean planted area for 2022 is estimated at a record 91.0 million acres, up 4 percent from last year. Compared with last year, planted acreage is up or unchanged in 24 of the 29 estimating States.

All wheat planted area for 2022 is estimated at 47.4 million acres, up 1 percent from 2021. If realized, this represents the fifth lowest all wheat planted area since records began in 1919. The 2022 winter wheat planted area, at 34.2 million acres, is up 2 percent from last year but down less than 1 percent from the previous estimate. Of this total, about 23.7 million acres are Hard Red Winter, 6.89 million acres are Soft Red Winter, and 3.62 million acres are White Winter. Area expected to be planted to other spring wheat for 2022 is estimated at 11.2 million acres, down 2 percent from 2021. Of this total, about 10.5 million acres are Hard Red Spring wheat. Durum planted area for 2022 is expected to total 1.92 million acres, up 17 percent from the previous year.