Fundamentally Speaking

As noted last week in a piece on corn plantings, Monday's prospective seedings report is just the start as a number of factors, primarily weather, can alter what mix of crops is actually put in the ground.

The USDA will issue a number of other acreage estimates this upcoming growing season with the March intention figures updated in the June Acreage report and then some of the crop production figures that will be issued starting in August.

This chart looks at the 1995-2024 average change for soybean planted acres from the March intentions to the June report then the June acreage figures into the annual crop production report that is issued in January of the following year, and also the total March intentions to final change for the top 18 soybean growing states and the U.S. on the left-hand axis.

Reported on the right-hand axis is the standard deviation of both the March to June acreage changes and then the revisions from June into the final report to measure the volatility of these acreage changes.

There does appear to be quite a north and south divide as northern states like MI, MN, ND, SD and WI have the greatest average declines in final soybean acreage vs what was intended, though Arkansas has the largest drop of 1.5%.

On the other hand KS, KY, LA and TN more often see higher final seedings than estimated in the March prospective plantings report. LA, ND and SD have the largest standard deviations for acreage revisions, likely linked to weather issues such as cold in the north and rainy conditions down south.

For the U.S., over the past 30 years, the average March to June change has been down 0.2% with another 0.4% fall from the June acreage report into the final numbers with the March to final average off 0.5%.

Last year was the first time since 2018 that the final U.S. planted soybean area was higher than the amount farmers intended.

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