Futures jump as US corn, beans, wheat plantings cut

US agriculture futures jumped on Tuesday as the USDA delivered a series of bullish numbers in its hotly-anticipated quarterly Acreage Report, with the figures for the planted area for the coming corn, soybean, and wheat crops far lower than the trade had been anticipating.

Corn planting was called at 92 million acres, a figure 3% higher than last year, but well below the 94.1 million-acre average acres from pre-release trade polling.

The corn harvest is expected on 84 million acres, up from last year’s 81.3 million acres.

The cuts far outweighed a series of bearish 2019/20 end stock figures in a separate USDA report released Tuesday, and by 1320 Eastern Time the September Chicago corn contract was up 4.4% intraday to a three-month high of $3.4325/bu.

Despite total soybean area rising 10% year-on-year to 83.8 million acres, the figure was still below an 84.8-million-acre trade guess.

The soybean harvest is expected at 83 million acres, well above last year’s 75 million acres.

Soybeans were up 2% on the day at $8.79/bu by 1320 Eastern time.

The report said that there is still some 2.2 million acres of the planting forecast that was not yet in the ground as of June 15, while there were 12.1 million acres of soybean left to be planted too.

Total wheat planting came in at 44.3 million acres, below an average industry guess at 44.7 million acres and down from last year’s 45.2 million acres.

“This represents the lowest all wheat planted area since records began in 1919,” the USDA said.

Broken down, that included winter wheat planting at 30.6 million acres, which was notably below the 31.2 million acres planted in 2019/20.

The winter wheat harvest is expected to hit 23.4 million acres, down from 24.3 million acres last year.

By 1320 Eastern time, Chicago wheat was up 1.8% at $4.95/bu and Kansas City gained 1.9% to $4.445/bu.

The spring wheat area came to 12.2 million acres, ahead of as a 12.5-million-acre trade estimate and 12.7 million acres planted last year.

Despite the lower planted area, the USDA expects 11.8 million acres of spring wheat to be harvested – up from 11.7 million acres in 2019/20.

Durum planting was put at 1.5 million acres, up from 1.3 million acres last year.

UPDATE: Adds USDA note on unplanted area.