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Enviado: 30/3/2007 16:56Enviado: 30/3/2007 16:52
Enviado: 30/3/2007 16:45March 31, 2007
Farmers to Plant Most Amount of Corn Since ’44
By ANDREW MARTIN
American farmers are planning to plant more corn this year than anytime since World War II, as farmers rush to cash in on high prices bolstered by the demand for ethanol.
The United States Department of Agriculture released a report today on prospective plantings that estimated that American farmers would plant 90.5 million acres of corn in 2007, a 15 percent increase over last year and the most since 1944.
Considered one of the most highly anticipated agriculture reports in years, if not decades, the prospective plantings report promises to have broad implications throughout the agriculture, food and energy sectors.
The rush to plant corn comes at the cost of other crops, particularly soybeans and cotton. The Department of Agriculture said that if farmers followed through with their stated intentions, soybean acreage would drop 11 percent and cotton acreage would fall 20 percent.
“This year, we are planting wall-to-wall corn,” said Webb Bozeman, a farmer in Flora, Miss., who normally plants cotton, corn and soybeans. “Corn is profitable. Cotton is pretty much break-even at best.”
Commodity markets reacted immediately to the report, with corn futures falling 5 percent. Soybean futures also fell, about 3 percent, but they had gained more than 30 percent over the last year on expectations that farmers would reduce acreage. Cotton futures rose about 0.5 percent.
With corn prices expected to soften, at least temporarily, the report should ease concerns about increases in food costs, which had started to tick upwards.
David Driscoll, an analyst for Citigroup, said that while the corn crop was still dependent on the weather, he said the report was a positive sign that there would be enough corn to meet both fuel and food needs and to replenish depleted corn inventories.
“The moral of the story is, if you dangle money in front of farmers, they take it,” Mr. Driscoll said.
Farmers also said they planned to plant 60.3 million acres of wheat this year, a 5 percent increase over 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/busin ... ref=slogin