The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its newest crop outlook on Monday, and it showed that U.S. farmers are rushing to plant corn this spring instead of less-profitable crops.
While all agricultural markets have been hurt by the ongoing trade war with China, corn has weathered the storm better, since very little U.S. corn is sold to China. Other crops like soybeans, cotton, and sorghum all depend on Chinese demand and have seen prices drop as purchases dried up during the last year.
U.S. farmers are expected to plant 92.8 million acres of corn this year, up from 89.1 million acres last year. Meanwhile, the USDA also showed stockpiles of corn leftover from last year’s harvest to be higher than expected, sitting at 8.6 billion bushes as of March 1st. These current big supplies and prospect for a bigger harvest this fall caused markets to tumble to new contract lows, with May corn futures dropping over 17 cents to trade at $3.57 per bushel on Friday.