ATCHISON, Kan. — Winter weather won’t let go in some of the country’s major spring wheat growing areas, which means that every day that planting progress is halted may mean some of those acres will be soybean fields this summer.
USDA latest Prospective Plantings report pegged the U.S. total spring-planted area at an estimated 14.1 million acres, a whopping 12 percent higher than just a year ago. But how much of that will not get planted as snow still covers many of those fields in mid-April?
“I feel as though losing spring wheat acres to soybeans is gaining in likelihood at this stage of the game,” said Mike Zuzolo from Global Commodity Analytics. ”South Dakota had only 1 percent of spring wheat planted at last check compared to 48 percent in 2017 and about 34 percent on the five-year average. That would suggest that all wheat acres are going down and bean acres are going up.”
Although the market action over the past week has suggested is the exact opposite.
“It has been a buy beans, sell corn, sell wheat type of mindset in this market,” Zuzolo said. “What puzzles me is that trade seems to be on something other than the fundamentals, they might still be stuck on investment flows.”
Zuzolo says domestic grain markets are also ignoring fundamentals on an international level, citing wheat issues in Australia and parts of Ukraine.
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–GLOBAL COMMODITY ANALYTICS