USDA forecasts increase in corn acreage and unexpected decrease in wheat acreage in the US in 2025

In the Prospective Plantings report (with forecasts of sowing areas in the United States in 2025) published on March 31, USDA experts unexpectedly lowered the estimate of wheat sowing areas, but increased the forecast of corn sowing areas.

Corn acreage is expected to increase 5% from 90.6 million acres (38.6 million hectares) in 2024, 1% above analysts’ average estimate, while soybean acreage is expected to decrease 4% from 87.1 million acres to 83.5 million acres, compared to analysts’ estimate of 83.76 million acres.

Analysts had expected that due to the decrease in soybean plantings, farmers would increase the area under wheat to 46.5 million acres. However, USDA experts believe that the area under all types of wheat will decrease by 2% compared to 2024 from 46.1 to 45.4 million acres, which will be the second lowest figure since 2019. At the same time, winter wheat will be sown on 33.3 million acres (0.6 million acres less than analysts expected), spring wheat – 10 million acres (-0.5 million acres), durum wheat – 2 million acres.

The Grain Stocks report (on quarterly grain stocks in the US) showed that as of March 1, stocks of major crops changed compared to the same period last year as follows:

• corn – decreased by 2% to 207 million tons, which is in line with analysts’ estimates,
• soybeans – grew by 4% to 52 million tons, which is in line with analysts’ estimates,
• wheat – grew by 14% to 33.75 million tons, which exceeded analysts’ estimates by 1.8%.

The market reacted quite calmly to the report data, and May corn futures rose by 0.9% to $180/t (0% for the month, -6.6% for the year), while December futures fell by 0.1% to $174/t (-2%, -10%).

At the same time, May soybean futures fell by 0.8% to $372.9/t (+0.5%, -17%), and November futures fell by 1% to $374.5/t (0%, -14%) due to significant soybean stocks and a smaller-than-expected reduction in sowing areas.