Will Today's Numbers Really Mean Much?
Mar 31, 2010
Here's what we'll know for sure when USDA releases it's Prospective Planting report in about an hour: corn and soybean will be planted this year. (Click here for complete AgWeb coverage throughout the day.)
Beyond that, we really won't know any more about this year's crop than we did yesterday.
The crack Farm Journal Media research team pulled together numbers from the past 10 March Prospective Plantings Report and compared those to the final numbers in January's Annual Crop Production Report. In short, some years they get it pretty close. In other years, they miss it by a mile.
Remember 2007? That was the BIG corn year. The number went up nearly 5 million acres from the March to June reports before settling back a little in the final January numbers.
Soybeans weren't much different.
So as the market digests these numbers today, remember it will be relatively short lived and soon the attention will turn to weather and planting progress. After that, it will turn to how many corn acres really got/are getting planted.
Then we do this all over again in June.
