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Ag economist surprised by USDA soybean acreage estimate

A University of Illinois agriculture economist says the USDA’s 2015 soybean acreage projection is surprisingly low.  John Newton tells Brownfield the USDA’s projection is for fewer 2015 soybean acres.  However, Newton points to recent reports suggesting that, because of lower production costs, U.S. farmers may switch acres from corn to soybeans this spring, leading to increases in 2015 soybean plantings.  Newton says USDA’s yield projection, on the other hand, is almost a bushel over trade estimates.

“While we’re surprised at the acreage number, the yield number more than makes up for that,” said Newton on Wednesday, “and so we’re not really that far off on the total crop size.”

Newton says trade guesses on soybean plantings for 2015 range from a low of 82.1 million acres to a high of 88.3 million acres, 4.8 million acres above the record plantings of 2014. On average, however, he says the trade guess suggests a 2.3 million acre increase to 86.0 million acres of planted soybeans for 2015.

On the other hand, USDA projections for the U.S. average soybean yield is 46 bushels per acre, 1.8 bushels below the record 2014 yield, and 0.8 bushels above the average trade guess. The USDA yield projection is approximately 1.7 bushels higher than a trend-yield forecast of 44.3 bushels per acre. Combining the USDA projections for soybean yield and harvested acres, the 2015 soybean crop is projected to total 3.8 billion bushels and would only be 169 million bushels below the record 2014 crop.

AUDIO: John Newton (5 min. MP3)