Like many corn and soybean farmers, Kaden Sweeney watched the U.S.-Iran war causing upheaval in global markets last spring, sending prices for critical farm inputs like diesel and fertilizer soaring and casting uncertainty over whether and how this year’s planting season would play out.
Ultimately, Sweeney did what he usually does: plant roughly half his acreage to corn and the other half to soybeans: the tried-and-true 50-50 rotation.
USDA’s annual acreage report, scheduled for 11 a.m. CT on Tuesday, caps a months-long guessing game centering on how war-related disruptions may have affected farmer planting decisions. Sky-high fertilizer costs fueled speculation that farmers may make a wide-scale pivot away from corn, perhaps by as many as 1 million to 3 million acres, compared to early-2026 forecasts.
However, it appears that an expected shift from corn into soybeans may be more modest.
USDA may lower its estimate for U.S. corn plantings to 94.992 million acres, based on the average estimate in a Reuters survey of analysts. Such a number would mark a drop of only about 346,000 acres, or 0.4%, from 95.338 million acres in USDA’s March Prospective Plantings report. Here are the numbers from a few other respected market surveys:
- AgMarket.Net estimates corn plantings at 94.9 million acres and soybean plantings at 85.3 million acres, close to the survey average.
- StoneX sees a larger drop in corn plantings, with the firm’s figure coming in at 94.65 million acres, while it pegs soybeans at 85.35 million acres.
Still, none of those numbers are market-shaking, said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at StoneX. “Obviously, that does tend to shift the balance sheet somewhat if we get that, but if, in fact, that’s where the numbers are, I don’t think that’s a big market mover,” Suderman said, speaking on a recent University of Illinois Commodity Week podcast. “The other question is going to be whether we get any surprises on the stock side. We still feel like the USDA is too high on their feed usage number. Will we see stocks that prove that?”
Suderman doesn’t expect any movement on feed usage until USDA’s September report.
On the soybean side, plantings may be revised up by about 669,000 acres, or 0.8%, to 85.369 million acres, based on the Reuters survey. Some analysts had been looking for an increase of at least 1 million acres.
Sweeney, who farms near Charleston in east-central Illinois, could be the poster farmer for a big reason why corn acres may remain historically high.
“The tie goes to corn,” said Sweeney, who also is a hedging strategist for AgMarket.Net. “Everything else being equal, farmers like to play in corn. They figure out a way to make it happen.”
$5 corn “covers a lot of sins”
USDA’s end-June acreage report is typically one of the most anticipated and market-moving data sets each year. Double-digit rallies or selloffs in corn and soybean futures in the wake of the report’s release have been common over the years. USDA also reports quarterly grain stocks on Tuesday.
Many analysts were skeptical over USDA’s Prospective Plantings estimates because they were based on a 74,000-farmer survey conducted during the first two weeks of March, the early days of the war and well-before crude oil and fertilizer markets peaked.
Presumably, Tuesday’s numbers will provide a clearer picture, especially considering corn and soybean planting this spring was completed ahead of historical averages. Last year’s acreage report was based on a survey of nearly 68,000 farmers during the first two weeks of June.
Higher fertilizer costs stemming from the U.S.-Iran war may have prompted some farmers to switch land initially intended for corn into soybeans, Sweeney acknowledged. He said he’d already booked his seed and most of his fertilizer supply before the war broke out.
But Sweeney noted that excess rainfall that delayed planting in parts of the eastern Corn Belt was probably a bigger contributor to a corn-to-beans shift. Additionally, corn futures’ brief rally above $5 per bushel earlier this spring may have dissuaded farmers from flipping a more significant number of acres away from the grain.
“I think $5 corn covers a lot of sins,” Sweeney said. “Even if it doesn’t pencil out as nicely as you like.”
Corn futures have since nosedived as abundant rainfall and otherwise largely favorable Midwest weather drove expectations for another big harvest. December futures closed at $4.43 today, down over 12% from a $5.06½ peak reached May 13. November soybeans closed at $11.57, down from a $12.14 high in May.
Acreage debates aside, U.S. farmers appear poised for another bountiful harvest, and potentially a record in soybeans, assuming they avoid extreme heat or drought during July and August.
The average soybean plantings estimate, at about 85.4 million acres, would be up over 4 million acres, or 5.2%, from a six-year low in 2025. If yields average around last year’s record at 53 bushels per acre, production could come in at about 4.48 billion bushels, topping the 2021 record, based on USDA figures.
Corn production could approach 16 billion bushels, assuming average yields near last year’s record 183 bpa harvest. That would be a sharp drop from the record 17 billion bushels harvested in 2025 but still among the biggest crops on record.
