USDA’s Chief Economist Takes A Look At The Year Ahead

USDA’s Agriculture Outlook Forum got underway Thursday.  New Agriculture Department Chief Economist Justin Benavidez discussed what he sees for the next 12 months.

“The story for the year is progress being made on price, not hitting out of the park, not solving everyone's problems in terms of pricing overnight, but prices generally expected to move modestly higher,” Benavidez said.

With increases for the season ending average price for the major bulk crops, wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice.

"As for planted acreage, we see that this year we're trending more towards the soybean acreage side than we were at this time last year and getting back up to about that ten-year average where we trend more towards the soybean production and a little bit less towards corn acres, this favoring a relative increase in the number of acres for soybeans as opposed to corn,” he noted.

Leading, Benavidez said, to 94 million acres of corn and 85 million acres of beans projected to be planted, and a year-over-year decline in total acres planted for the five major commodity crops.  

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