Planting Intentions

Growers indicate their prospective crop mix for the 2023 season.

According to the Prospective Plantings report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, peanut producers intend to plant 1.55 million acres in 2023, up 7% from 2022. Planted acreage is expected to be up or unchanged in all peanut-producing states except for New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

In Georgia, the largest peanut-producing state, expected planted area is up 8% from 2022. States increasing acreage at least 110% or more are Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Cotton And Corn

Looking at rotation crops, growers intend to plant 11.3 million acres of cotton in 2023, down 18% from last year. Upland cotton area is expected to total 11.1 million acres, down 18% from 2022. American Pima area is expected to total 154,000 acres, down 16% from 2022.

Compared with last year, acreage decreases are expected in most cotton-estimating states, except Arizona, Missouri and Tennessee. Arizona is the only state expected to plant more cotton acres in 2023. Texas, the largest cotton-producing state, is expecting the largest decline in cotton planted area, down 1.65 million acres from last year. If realized, Upland cotton planted area in California will be a record low.

Corn planted area for all purposes in 2023 is estimated at 92 million acres, up 4% or 3.42 million acres from last year. Compared with 2022, planted acreage is expected to be up or unchanged in 40 of the 48 estimating states. Acreage increases for corn of 150,000 acres or more from last year are expected in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. Record-high acreage is expected in Arizona and Idaho. Record-low acreage is expected in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Corn acreage is expected to increase in all peanut-producing states except Florida and Texas.

Soybeans And Wheat

Soybean growers intend to plant 87.5 million acres in 2023, up slightly from last year. Acreage increases from last year of 100,000 or more are expected in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Record-high acreage is expected in Illinois, Nebraska, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin.

All wheat planted area for 2023 is estimated at 49.9 million acres, up 9% from 2022. The 2023 winter wheat planted area, at 37.5 million acres, is up 13% from last year and up 2% from the previous estimate. Of this total, about 26 million acres are Hard Red Winter, 7.8 million acres are Soft Red Winter and 3.71 million acres are White Winter.

Area expected to be planted to other spring wheat for 2023 is estimated at

Peanuts: Area Planted by State and U.S. (Estimated – March 31, 2023)

10.6 million acres, down 2% from 2022. Of this total, about 9.95 million acres are Hard Red Spring wheat. Durum planted area for 2023 is expected to total 1.78 million acres, up 9% from the previous year. PG

Key Takeaways And Reliability Of The 2023 Prospective Plantings Report

How reliable are the U.S. Department of Agriculture Prospective Planting report numbers as collected primarily based on surveys conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service? The NASS planted acreage projections across the U.S. generally hold well with low predictive error and hold especially well for corn and soybeans. However, there appears to be an error, albeit still quite small, when predicting planted acreage for cotton and rice.

There are likely two reasons stemming from the fact that cotton and rice are grown primarily in Southern states. The larger variance can be due to (1) the smaller sample size of farms and (2) the alternative crops available to plant in place of corn and soybeans.

Most of the U.S. corn and soybean acreage is grown in the upper Midwest but tends to take up acreage across the entire United States, which allows for a larger sample of farmers and less variance. In the South, farmers rotate corn and soybean crops with cotton, peanuts and even some vegetables. This makes it more difficult to project acres that may shift based on rotational needs, commodity prices, input costs and weather.

One way to investigate the difficulty in projecting acreage is by choosing the subsample of Southern states to see if 1) there is more variance across the changes in corn and soybean acreages given a smaller sample, and 2) the pattern of acreage changes across cotton and rice still holds in the subsample. We find this to be true.

We see more differences each year between prospective and actual planted acreages in corn and soybeans across Southern states, and the general pattern of differences each year for cotton and rice still holds between the full U.S. sample and the Southern subsample. This implies that we should gen- erally not expect any significant changes in harvest price expectations driven by differences in planted acreages but rather look to future market-moving events. PG

These excerpts are from an article by Hunter Biram, University of Arkansas, and William Maples, Mississippi State University. To read the complete article, go to southernagtoday.org