Fundamentally Speaking

The key June acreage report is coming up and while trade estimates are just being gathered, it seems the faster than normal seeding pace this past spring for corn suggests the planted area figure may be higher than what was given in the March Intentions report.

This graphic shows the average percent change in corn acreage from the March prospective plantings report to the June acreage figures on the left-hand axis for the top 18 producing states and the U.S.

Reported on the right-hand axis is the highest and lowest percent change from 2000 to 2024.

The figures in the yellow rectangles are the standard deviation, a measure of variability of the percent acreage changes from 2000-2024.

The 25-year U.S. average acreage change between the March intentions and the June acreage report is up 0.6%.

Applied to this year's end of March corn intentions of 95.326 million acres, this projects to approximately 95.9 million acres, up about 572,000 acres.

Another noteworthy feature is all but two states (North and South Dakota) of the 18 top states see an average increase in planted area from the March intentions to the June acreage report.

That should not be surprising as these two states are very much impacted by weather conditions as cold and wet springs often result in some intended corn acreage never getting in the ground.

Both also have two of the highest standard deviation figures with the biggest range between percent increase and decreases from the two reports.

Similarly, the more southern states such as KY, TN and TX have the largest average increases.

Looking at the U.S., the standard deviation is the lowest at 1.6% due in large part to the fact that the three largest producing states of IA, IL and NE tend to see their June acreage figures very close to what farmers in those states intended.

Over the past 25 years the largest national increase was 2.7% or 2.434 million acres in 2007, while the largest decline was in 2020, down 5.1% or a 4.984 million acres decline in U.S. planted corn area from the March intentions to the June acreage report

(c) Copyright 2025 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.