US farmers should still be able to achieve the US Agriculture Department's corn seedings forecast of 92.2 million acres - the second-largest since 1944 - despite weather delays in April, a grains analyst said Friday. Planting progress is behind schedule, but it's too early for farmers to start shifting some acreage to soybeans or even to other varieties of corn.
"Overall, our farmers are nervous, but not panicked yet," said analyst Tim Emslie with Country Hedging. The firm is the commodity brokerage arm of CHS Inc, the largest US farm co-operative.
"In the Corn Belt, we think there will be little switching of intentions at this point," Emslie told the Global Ags Forum, Reuters on-line grains chatroom. "Corn returns are still blowing them away on paper." While farmers might be tempted to consider switching to shorter-season corn hybrids, "frankly there will be some limit to that from seed availability," Emslie said.
Emslie said farmers would not start making significant changes to their planting intentions until May 15-20. Corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade set an all-time high this month at $7.83-3/4 per bushel, driven by extremely tight old-crop inventories. Country Hedging's three-month price forecast for CBOT corn is $7.89. Measured as a percentage of usage, stocks of corn in the United States, the world's biggest exporter, will fall this summer to the lowest level since the 1930s.
Consequently, the grain trade is watching the progress of the new crop closely. Seeding progress had reached only 9 percent by April 24, USDA said, compared with the five-year average of 23 percent. One area that remains a wild card for corn acreage is the Dakotas, where seedings of the yellow grain are forecast to increase by about 20 percent from last year.
USDA forecast corn plantings in South Dakota for 2011 at 5.4 million acres and North Dakota at 2.5 million acres. CBOT December corn futures, which represent the new crop, hit a life-of-contract high of $6.84 this week, and Emslie said he expects the contract to surpass that level.
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