Will Wild Card Report Get Acreage Right?

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

The March USDA Planting Intentions Report. It’s the wild card according to Farmers Business Network Chief Economist Kevin McNew…

“March 31st report is the most unpredictable report of anything USDA does. No one really has a good idea. We can’t throw machine learning and AI at it. It really comes down to farmers in all kinds of different geographies, all kinds of different circumstances.”

FBN’s prediction ahead of USDA numbers is that they’re likely not going to get it right when it comes to cotton…

“USDA looked for massive declines in cotton acres. They had penciled in the forum around a 10-million-acre cotton number, that we had 30% drop in cotton plantings. We just didn’t see that from our farmers. Yeah, there’s some decline in cotton numbers, but not anywhere near the wholesale shifting out of cotton like USDA and trade expect.”

Thanks again to Farmers Business Network Chief Economist Kevin McNew. So what is FBN projecting? They expect 12.2 million acres of cotton. Looking at other crops, they’ve estimated 92.5 million acres of corn and 84.5 million acres of soybeans.