US farmers plan to go big on maize planting

Chicago — US farmers are planning to boost maize hectares in 2023, eyeing lower prices of fertiliser needed to grow the crop and hoping for a bumper crop after a late season drought withered 2022’s grain harvest and left US supplies near a decade low. 

Plans for the upcoming season were made even as doubts mounted about demand and price gains for soya beans outstripped maize late 2022. But early hectares forecasts and interviews with farmers show their faith in the biggest US crop has not waned.

A big crop from the world’s largest maize exporter, pared with more modest demand as global economic growth cools, could further ease prices for the staple used in fuel and animal feed that have come down after surging to a 10-year high when Russia invaded big maize producer Ukraine a year ago.

The decline in the cost of inputs such as fertiliser in the second half of 2022 sparked hopes that maize would be profitable in 2023 even though it typically requires a more active management style and greater financial investment than the No 2 US cash crop, soya beans.

“We are going to be heavy corn (maize) and probably the heaviest on corn we have been in a long time,” said Brandon Hunnicutt, who farms 930ha with his father and brother near Giltner, Nebraska.

The budget for his farm’s 2023 crops, devised as the 2022 harvest wound down, calls for about 90% of those hectares to be devoted to maize, Hunnicutt said. That compares to about 55% in 2022.

Hunnicutt cited the reliability of maize yields as a main reason to go big on maize in 2023. “On corn, it is a little more scientific,” he said. “Soybeans can kind of be a ‘well, I guess we will spray a fungicide and see if it works’.”

Analysts at S&P Global Commodity Insights forecast US farmers would plant 37-million hectares of maize in 2023, 2.2% more than the previous year, and a more modest 0.6% increase for soya beans, mirroring other early forecasts.

US farmers alternate between soya beans and maize in a bid to maintain soil health. After favouring soya beans 2022 when fertiliser prices spiked, many are set to devote the majority of those fields to maize.

“It would take something pretty monumental to switch a bunch of acres around,” said Ohio farmer Scott Metzger.

But the maize bushels might have a hard time finding a home after harvest starts in September.

Since 2022’s harvest, exporters have booked sales of just 24.038m tonnes of US maize, down 43% from a year earlier, according to US agriculture department data.

In January the government issued its most recent maize export forecast for the full year: 48.9-million tonnes, which was 19.8% below the initial export projection in May 2022.

Drought

On the domestic front, US maize consumption has been pegged at a seven-year low of 304.561-million tonnes in the 2022/23 marketing year, down 4% from a year earlier. That was largely due to weakening demand for feed as the US beef cattle herd fell to its smallest since 1962 and an avian flu outbreak ravaged commercial flocks.

Recent US agriculture department data showed that after a drought last August, farmers were forced to abandon the highest percentage of their corn hectares in the past 10 years. This winter’s weather has done little to replenish soil moisture the crop will need during the upcoming growing season.

The 2022 harvest shortfall left maize supplies at their lowest since 2013 and made farmers hopeful that prices would rally in the coming months.

Illinois farmer Ellen Rahn plans to devote about 75% of the 647 hectares of her farm to maize. She followed a similar strategy of increasing maize hectares after the drought of 2012 wrecked harvest across the Midwest, sending stocks to their lowest in nine years and supporting prices for the 2013 crop.

“We are in a good part of the world ... where we are usually guaranteed decent yields,” Rahn said.

Reuters