USDA reports this week it expects more than 9 million acres of prevent plant for 2020. This comes during a time when the department is calling for record yields for the corn and soybean crops.
Many farmers say 2019 was a struggle especially during planting and the growing season but for some farmers in the Northern Plains, this is the second straight year they’ve dealt with prevent plant.
“Where I farm, 50% of our farm is prevent plant this year,” says Ben Longlet, a farmer in Arthur, North Dakota.
This year is tough after taking prevent plant. That’s partly because some of his crop didn’t get harvested until the spring. Even then, ground conditions weren’t great and machinery got stuck.
“We had about 50% of our corn left out over winter,” says Longlet.
He says spring planting weather didn’t cooperate either.
“We kept getting rain and it really just pushed our spring planting back to the point where it was,” says Longlet. “We just had to throw in the towel because the planting conditions were never right.”
USDA says there are 9.3 million acres of prevent plant in 2020. Arkansas has just over 1 million acres. However, a large portion of prevent plant is located in the Northern Plains. More than 2.5 million acres are in North Dakota and 1.2 million acres in South Dakota.
“On our farm, we planted less than 10% of our ground in the [South Dakota and North Dakota] areas,” says DuWayne Bosse of Bolt Marketing LLC.
Bosse farms primarily in Northeast South Dakota. He believes these numbers are one reason why the market was higher Thursday.
“I think the market [Thursday looked] at the prevent plant acres thinking, ‘Oh, we have to take harvested acres down 1 million to 6 million for corn and beans’ this year,” says Bosse.
USDA reported more than 19 million acres of prevent plant last year at this time.
Picture courtesy: Ben Longlet
