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Understanding the acreage shift

Planted corn acres peaked in 2012 and every year since then, Purdue ag economist Chris Hurt says corn acres have been on the decline.  “It’s actually about 7 million acres that we’ve dropped,” he says.

He tells Brownfield part of the reason acres have been declining is because corn demand for ethanol leveled off after it plateaued in 2010.

Unlike corn, Hurt says soybeans have seen continuous growth in global demand; primarily from the Chinese market.  “We’re now reflecting this continued growth in the Chinese demand that gives us a need to shift more acres into soybeans,” he says.  “We think this is probably a direction we will continue to see in the next several years.  We tend to think pretty flat on ethanol demand growth and just some increase in livestock feeding.”

He anticipates the bigger growth in production will continue to be in soybeans and for the first time ever in the United States, Hurt says planted acres to soybeans could surpass acres planted to corn.