U.S. planting gets underway

Now that planting is underway in the United States, we will finally start to receive a better indication of actual plantings on this year’s crops.

In the February Outlook Forum, the USDA pegged U.S. acres at 92 million on corn, 90 million for soybeans and 45 million for wheat.

In the March plantings intentions, we saw plantings predicted at 91.1 million on corn, 87.6 million on soybeans and 44.7 million on wheat. There have been several changes from the time the data was collected to produce these numbers.

While acres are always a focal point of the market, we are seeing more interest on them this year given current new crop balance sheet estimates. The U.S. ending stocks on both of these is expected to remain relatively unchanged from this year with 10% on corn and 3% on soybeans.

These are very tight projections and leave no room for crop loss this growing season. It also means the United States will need to continue to ration...