CHICAGO - The U.S. Agriculture Department on Friday forecast that U.S. farmers will raise their corn plantings and cut back on their soybean acreage in the 2016/17 marketing year.
The USDA's Office of the Chief Economist estimated that farmers would seed 90.5 million acres of corn during the spring, 2.1 million more than they did in 2015/16. Soybean acreage was seen falling to 82.0 million from 83.2 million.
For production, USDA estimated a 3.785 billion bushel soybean crop and a 13.900 billion bushel corn crop.
The government also forecast all wheat acreage of 53.0 million and a crop of 2.060 billion bushels.
The forecasts are developed by consensus within the USDA on a long-term scenario for the agricultural sector for the next decade. USDA will release its complete report on projections for the next 10 years in February.
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The full report is available at www.usda.gov/oce.
