Intended Corn Plantings Up Over 7 Million Acres in 2 Years

I was reviewing the intended corn acre plantings just issued by the USDA and some of the numbers that jump out at me are:

• Total intended corn acre plantings of 95.9 million acres for 2012.  This is up almost 4 million acres over 2011 and up over 7 million acres from 2010.  This is the largest amount of corn acres planted since 1937.
• There are now three states that will plant more than 10 million acres of corn, Iowa at 14.6, Illinois at 12.5 and Nebraska at 10.3 (I am not sure what those states planted in 1937).
• Iowa had the largest increase at 500 thousand acres.
• Soybean acres are down to 73.9 million acres from 75 million in 2011 and 77.4 million in 2010.
• Illinois leads the way with 9 million acres and Iowa slightly behind at 8.8 million.  This is the first time in a few years that Illinois will plant more bean acres than Iowa.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the market pricing.  With the smaller bean crop in South America and reduced acres here in the US, beans may rally and many market analysts had pegged the corn acres this high, but most were lower.  It will be interesting this year on pricing of both crops.