Fundamentally Speaking

The survey period for USDA's end of March prospective plantings report is now complete with the trade expecting a U.S. soybean planted area figure close to UDSA's 84-million-acre projection given late last month at their annual Ag Outlook Forum.

This is about a three-million-acre decline from the final seeded area a year ago with that area having switched to corn.

The new crop November soybean/December corn ratio at 2.24 is not that far from its low of 2.20 seen the middle of last month.

This price ratio along with prospective per acre returns all point to corn capturing back some planted area from soybeans for the coming year.

Of course, what farmers intend to seed and what actually gets put in the ground can change quite dramatically, often due to weather conditions and relative price changes influenced by a variety of fundamental and technical factors.

Similar to what we did previously, this chart shows U.S. soybean planted area changes from the February USDA Ag Outlook projection (AO) to the end of March planting intentions report and then to the June acreage report and then to the final figures given in January in 1000 acres on the left-hand axis.

Reported on the right-hand axis is the percentage change from the March Prospective Plantings report to the final figures given in the annual January production summary.

Last year's USDA Ag Outlook projection of 87.5 million acres proved too high with the March intentions coming in at 86.510 million acres, 1.1% below that.

In June, USDA reported farmers actually seeded 410,000 acres less than that at 86.10 million acres, 0.5% below the intentions figure.

Late spring rains in parts of the Upper Midwest actually resulted in less corn acreage than had been indicated by the June report with soybeans being the beneficiary as final 2024 U.S. planted soybean acreage was actually up 950,000 acres from that figure of 1.1%.

As a result, for the first time since 2018, final soybean acreage was higher than what farmers had intended back at the end of March by 540,000 acres or 0.6%.

In recent seasons, final soybean seeded area has fallen substantially from the March intentions, down 3.90 million acres, 4.4% two years ago, down 3.5 million acres, 3.9% the year before that and then in 2019 a massive 8.517 million acre drop from the prospective plantings report to the final figure given in the annual production report, down 10.1%.

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