Now that spring is here, farmers’ thoughts turn to planting crops. After surveying farmers about spring planting intentions, an economics firm says the 2020 corn and soybean crops could be much larger than in 2019.
Allendale Economics analysts say American farmers intend to plant about 3 million more acres of corn this year than were planted during 2019. That would be nearly 95 million acres, which represents the potential for the third-largest corn crop ever planted in the nation.
The largest corn crop ever was about 97.3 million acres in 2012, but this year’s crop could have the potential of reaching a record 15.4 bushels.
Much of the expected increase is the result of planting on acres that weren’t planted because of poor weather conditions during 2019.
The soybean crop also is expected to be bigger this year than in 2019, the analysts said. They expect 83.7 million acres to be planted, which wold be an increase of about 7.6 million acres — still about 6.5 million fewer acres than the record 90.2 million acres planted in 2017.
The expected 2020 acres provides a crop forecast at 4.2 billion bushels, the fourth-largest crop ever harvested.
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