U.S. farmers plan to sow 93.6 million acres of corn in 2016, exceeding all analyst estimates and boosting prospects for higher supplies after this year’s harvest.
The acreage would represent a 6.4 percent increase over last year’s plantings and be the most since 2013, according to a report Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmers also told the government they intend to reduce soybean planting to 82.2 million acres, compared with 82.65 million in 2015.
The increase in corn acreage “is mainly due to the expectation of higher returns in 2016 compared with other crops,” the USDA said.
U.S. growers are facing a drop in profit for the third straight year to $54.8 billion as persistent surpluses depress crop and livestock prices, the USDA said in February. The hard times follow an era of record profit that peaked at $123.3 billion in 2013, when rising global demand combined with a domestic drought that crimped production.
Ample harvests since then are boosting supplies of major U.S. crops. Corn inventories as of March 1 in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower, rose 0.8 percent from a year earlier to
7.81 billion bushels, the government said in a separate report. That’s the highest for this time of year since 1987. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected 7.798 billion, on average.
Soybean supplies on March 1 jumped 15 percent to 1.53 billion bushels, less than analysts estimated, while wheat reserves rose 20 percent to 1.37 billion bushels, more than the survey forecast.
Total U.S. wheat planted for harvest in 2016 was estimated at 49.559 million acres, down from 54.644 million last year and below the lowest estimate in the Bloomberg survey. Cotton acreage was projected at 9.56 million acres, 11 percent more than in 2015.
Corn is the most valuable U.S. crop, followed by soybeans, hay and wheat, USDA data show.
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