USDA releases acreage estimates for Arkansas

The ongoing trade war with China is now impacting what Arkansas farmers will plant this spring. Corn and cotton acres are expected to increase, while soybean acres, the state’s top crop, will drop along with rice and peanuts, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (NASS).

“Soybean prices are down a lot over the past year, due to a number of factors including a big U.S. and world supply, and that our exports are down a good amount from last year, largely due to reduced sales to China,” Scott Stiles, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture said.

“What’s really the news item here is ‘how are the trade talks going?’ The U.S. has a trade team in China this week and their Chinese counterparts will be in Washington next week. It’s positive that we’re still talking to each other, but the commodity markets want this resolved. What’s keeping grain prices in a lull is the lack of a finalized trade agreement,” Stiles added.

Details from this year’s report:

Corn
Arkansas producers plan to plant 830,000 acres of corn, up 26% from last year when 660,000 acres of corn were planted. This would be the highest corn acreage in Arkansas since 2013, when there was 880,000 acres.

Nationwide, producers intend to plant 92.792 million acres of corn this year, up 4% from last year’s 89.129 million acres and almost 1.5 million acres more than the pre-report private estimates.

“The futures market reaction has been very negative to the report with new crop prices finishing the day down 14 to 16 cents following the report,” Stiles said.

Cotton
Although U.S. cotton acreage is expected to be 2% lower than a year ago with 13.78 million acres of cotton expected to be planted, Arkansas producers plan to up their acreage 20% to 580,000 acres. Last year, growers counted 485,000 acres planted a year ago. This would mark the fourth consecutive year of increasing cotton acreage in Arkansas and the highest acreage since 2012, when there were 595,000 acres planted.

“The NASS Arkansas cotton acreage projection falls in line with the National Cotton Council’s results released in early February which indicated 555,000 acres would be planted this year,” Stiles said. “In contrast, the Cotton Council expected U.S. cotton acreage to increase this year to 14.45 million – up from 14.1 million last year.”

Soybeans
Arkansas producers plan to plant 3.1 million acres of soybeans, down 5% from last year when 3.28 million acres were planted. U.S. producers are expected to plant 84.617 million acres of soybeans, down 5% from a year ago when 89.196 million acres of soybeans were planted nationally.

“This came in just over 1.5 million acres lower than the average pre-report trade estimate,” Stiles said.

Rice
Arkansas producers are expected to reduce rice area by 40,000 acres, or 3%, to 1.4 million acres.

“All of this reduction is attributed to a 50,000 acre decline in long-grain rice,” Stiles said. “Medium-grain acres in Arkansas are expected to increase a third straight year by 10,000 to a total of 200,000 acres.”

U.S. rice acreage is expected to be 3% lower this year with 2.87 million acres planted compared to 2.946 million last year.

Peanuts
Arkansas producers are expected to plant 25,000 peanut acres, slightly less than the 26,000 planted last year.

“It’s not a surprise to see more corn and cotton, given current soybean prices. We knew bean acres would be off some,” he said. “In the end, rice acres may not change much at all from last year. The weather over the next month or two, and to some degree crop prices, can still affect planting.”

Stiles said that soybeans were generally the alternative on rice acres for Arkansas growers and the acres would likely stay in rice if the soybeans “didn’t pencil out.”

“By comparison, November soybean futures during the first two weeks of March are a full $1 per bushel less than a year ago and basis is much weaker as well,” he said.