crop rotations | Field 2 Field

January 30, 2023January 30, 2023

Plant-2023 is Already Set in Stone

Plant-2023 is already on the minds of farmers across the country. As proof, Farm Futures recently did a survey of farmers in all parts of the country who will get right to work this spring. Jacqueline Holland is the grain marketing analyst for Farm Futures.

Even if wheat plant-2023 does put a cap on corn and soybean plantings, Holland says American farmers are still going to plant a whole bunch of both crops.

“For corn, we’re looking at 90.5 million acres,” she said. “For soybeans, that’s 88.9 million acres. And for winter wheat, we calculated 34.9 million acres. For spring wheat, which includes hard red spring, white spring, and durum wheat, we’re anticipating 13.9 million acres. That gives us a grand total of 228.3 million acres for the three principal crops.”

It’s been a few years since wheat took some acres from both corn and soybeans but rising input costs and still solid prices mean a lot of farmers may be giving wheat plant-2023 a second look. She was surprised when their winter wheat calculation came in lower than USDA’s prediction issued in January.

“But if you go back at Chicago winter wheat futures prices during peak planting season last October, they were 25 percent higher than the year before,” Holland said. “At the same time, input prices for corn and beans were still rising, so maybe it shouldn’t be that surprising that wheat is drawing interest for plant-2023.”

The one thing even more surprising to her was how narrow the gap was between corn and soybean acres. It’s probably going down to the wire to see how the acres shake out. But, going into spring, it looks like farmers have already made up their minds about what and how much they’re planting in the spring.

“A lot of growers had finalized their plant-2023 rotations before 2023 even began,” she said. “Seventy percent said they already had things locked in and weren’t expecting to make any last-minute changes.”

One thing she’s going to watch closely is the soybean harvest. Holland says 88.9 million acres of soybeans have the potential to lead to a “record-large” crop. If that happens, some of the supply pressure weighing on commodity markets may ease a bit.

“However, if we see more soy crush plants coming online and increasing capacity by the time we harvest the crop, there may not be much of a price break,” she said. “That added demand could keep soybean prices high even though we could be looking at a record crop.

“That’s a big one I’m going to be watching in the coming months,” Holland said.

February 8, 2022February 8, 2022

Planting questions in 2022

Planting questions abound here in the late stages of winter. How many acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and other crops will get planted in 2022? The acreage battle is a hot topic of conversation in the markets and in coffee shops across rural America. This year’s acreage battle is far from over and actually began last year.

That’s the opinion of Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain in Nashville, Tennessee. The long-time market expert says this has gone on for months for a variety of reasons, led by fertilizer issues.

“Even going back to last fall, the market was very aware of upcoming fertilizer challenges,” he said on the phone from his Nashville office. “It was widely known that fertilizer prices were rising rapidly and would have an impact on this year’s acreage mix.”

He said for a moment in time, they saw the ratios and new-crop prices seem to favor corn. It appeared the market was trying to buy corn acreage back because of the potential of losing acres due to fertilizer prices. The fact of the matter is no one has a clue what the crop rotations are going to look like.

“There are several well-respected analysts like the University of Illinois that had an estimate of 96 million corn acres,” he said. “That would be an increase near 2.5 million over last year.

“And then, Farm Futures did a customer survey and came away with an estimate of 90 million acres,” he added. “The difference between 96 million and 90 million acres in terms of pricing implications, balance sheets, and fundamentals is phenomenal. Those are two totally-different markets and totally-different worlds.”

In any given year, Vaclavik says trying to predict or estimate what the acreage will be is a near-impossible task. Occasionally, someone will predict accurate numbers, but no one is consistently accurate. There are always “curveballs,” and this year will feature more curveballs than ever.

“This uncertainty doesn’t just apply to corn and soybean acres,” he said. “You have another bunch of crops that also make money for farmers. Spring wheat makes money; oats make money; small grains make money.”

The “other piece of the pie” among the planting questions is that principle crop acreage has trended lower for the last 7-8 years. Things are in a state of flux, and he feels the unknown might actually be more supportive than not for the markets. The fertilizer question and its impact depends on where you’re located.

“I’ve talked to people who have their fertilizer needs covered, and they feel good about the situation,” Vaclavik says. “The thing is that most farmers really don’t want to change their rotations. I did a survey of my customers a while back and most said they’re rarely in favor of switching rotations, if ever.

“If they can stick to their rotations, that’s what they’ll do,” he added. “But it still could be tricky.”

Even a farmer who’s already locked in their fertilizer for the 2022 season can still run into fertilizer problems. Actually, getting the physical delivery of that product could be a different story because of serious supply chain issues.

Corn is also a more input-intensive crop, so farmers can’t have their fertilizer not show up when it’s time get moving on spring planting. While not everyone is going to struggle to get fertilizer, there is still a risk going into springtime. Consequently, fertilizer will be a major deciding factor in answering those planting questions.

Small grains could be an interesting topic in the spring. Vaclavik says he would not be surprised to see more spring grains in the acreage mix. One thing that people might not be talking about a lot is some of the northern United States and even into Canada are still experiencing drought.

“Things are still dry in the Dakotas and over the border in Canada,” Vaclavik said. “They are still in a drought, and that will be an additional factor when it comes to acreage. It all depends on what farmers are comfortable planting into the dry conditions. I know it’s not as bad as last summer, but there is still a drought in that region.

“I haven’t seen a year like this in recent memory where it’s so hard to predict the answers to the planting questions that we’re asking,” he added.

October 18, 2018October 19, 2018

Organic Farming adding acres and operations

Organic farming is growing to meet the increasing demand for its products. A report from Mercaris, an organic industry data service, says the U.S. now has roughly 6.5 million acres of organically certified land. The number of certified organic farms is three percent higher this year than in 2017. Laura Batcha, CEO/Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association, says that great is news.

“We always welcome seeing an increase in U.S. acres dedicated to organic farming,” Batcha said. “It’s something very important to see an increase in the overall value chain and the sustainability of the industry, as a whole.

“We’ve been investing in some particular initiatives that have an emphasis on increasing production in terms of row crops, including row crops and small grains,” Batcha added. “It’s really nice to see the number of acres has grown in the last year. Our members worked on projects to help to increase knowledge transfer that would support farmers transitioning their acres (to organic), so it’s nice to see that particular crop types and geographies are showing an increase.”

Some of those geographies include states along the East Coast, through the Corn Belt, and through the West. Those areas reported the largest gains in total certified operations. Just those three regions alone added 430 certified organic farming operations. Batcha is pleased that organic is spreading to different locations.

Batcha said the goal is to keep a nice and steady growth in the number of organic areas and operations across the country. That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do because there’s no one way of doing things in organic production that applies to all products.

“It’s tough to talk about keys to growing the industry as a whole because you have to look at it from a crop-specific perspective,” she said. “You also need to look at things from a regional perspective. What works for specialty crops in California won’t be the same thing that works for small grains in the Great Plains.

“The industry is focusing on several things right now,” Batcha added. “Organic regulations require crop rotation and cover-cropping. Organic farms have longer and more complex crop rotations (than traditional farming). What is needed is for crops in different rotations to have access to markets. It’s an emphasis the whole supply chain is looking at. Some of our farms may have six or seven different crops and we want healthy markets for all of them.

“The other thing the (Mercaris) report calls out is improving transparency in terms of data and statistics in the organic industry,” Batcha said. “But there are still gaps. The report recommended the same thing that our members have already brought to the Department of Agriculture. The recommendation we want is to see that the reporting of acreage from the certified agencies to the USDA to be a mandatory data transfer on an annual basis. It’s not only important for good statistics that inform policy choices, as well as farmer decision-making out in their fields.”

There are now 17,648 U.S. farms certified as compliant with the USDA National Organic Farming Program standards for organic row crop production. Total organic acres increased from 6.4 million acres in 2017.

The data company calls the report the only trusted information source on organic farmland statistics because the Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service will not be issuing data on organic acreage for 2018.