Price and planting delays due to the wet spring impacted what farmers planted in the Northern Plains. Spring wheat acreage came in at 11.11 million acres, which was 270,000 acres above expectations but 90,000 lower than March and 310,000 lower than the previous year. Of the major producing states, North Dakota acres increased 200,000 from the March Intensions report, while Montana declined 300,00 and South Dakota was down by 290,000.
Randy Martinson of Martinson Ag says this was a bit of a surprise to him. “I thought the spring wheat number was higher than what we were looking at. I figured we would have had less acres because of how wet it was and as farmers went to plant other crops. But id does again appear that the price was enough to be able to encourage some of them in the northern regions of North Dakota and Minnesota to try to plant wheat.” If fact, he says some of them actually planted after the last planting date for crop insurance.
Martinson says farmers in the Northern Plains also had some big shifts in row crops. For corn Minnesota increased acres by 500,00, while South Dakota dropped 300,000 and North Dakota dropped 600,000 from March. Corn acreage is expected to be down 1.1 million acres from last year.
Soybean acreage was even more interesting. North Dakota was the state that had the biggest change from the March Intensions Report showing a 1.1 million acre decline. That is also 1.35 million acres below last year. Martinson says, “Some of those acres shifted over to other minor crops like canola, sunflower, peas, dry edible beans and lentils which all bid for acres with historically high prices.” Other large state adjustments came in Minnesota, where acres were 500,000 below March and South Dakota which was 200,000 below March.
Other adjustments in the corn belt included Illinois where soybean acres were up 200,000 from March and 600,000 above last year, as well as Iowa which showed 100,000 less soybean acres verses intension but was still 200,000 above 2021.
