Acreage Report, Global Events Impacting Crop Prices

By Robert Coats

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service 2016 U.S. harvested acreage projections released June 30 demonstrate the productive capacity of U.S. rice, cotton, and grain producers.

Long-grain rice – second largest in current 11 years at 2.449 million acres (Chart 18).
Soybeans – largest on record at 83.037 million acres (Chart 22).
Cotton – fourth lowest in the current 10 years at 10.023 million acres (Chart 23).
Corn – third largest on record at 86.55 million acres (Chart 24).

Market considerations:

The June 30 acreage report, supply and demand as well as technical considerations, and a number of potential global anomaly and risk events (weather, political, monetary, social, military, etc.) have market participants scrambling to digest all the information and data to understand price response.