Soggy Fields Cut Corn Planting

Bloomberg, via Ritholtz:

U.S. corn farmers were unable to plant on soggy or flooded fields from Arkansas to North Dakota this year, signaling tighter grain stockpiles even after rising demand for livestock feed and ethanol sent prices surging.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture may cut its planting forecast on June 30 to 90.629 million acres, according to a Bloomberg News survey of 31 analysts. That’s less than the 92.178 million that farmers predicted in a government survey three months ago and would be the USDA’s biggest such reduction from the March forecast since 1995.
Parts of the Ohio River Valley and North Dakota had triple the normal rainfall in the past 90 days, Mississippi River floods were a record in May, and millions of Midwest acres were inundated with water. While prices slumped in the past few weeks, as drier weather improved conditions, late planting means fields are susceptible to heat and frost damage before this year’s harvest in September.
“It’s incredible how wet it has been this year,” said Scott Stirling, who plans to make an insurance claim for the first time in his 21 years of farming because 500 acres of his 7,500-acre farm near Martinton, Illinois, were too soggy to plant. “We needed the best crop ever to begin to rebuild inventories this year, and that’s just not going to happen.”

We barely got done this year, but it is good that people noticed we were struggling there.  We'll see what happens, but it was a long spring.