2018 Prospective Plantings Forecast

Gro Intelligence’s analysis of the USDA Prospective Plantings calls for:

            Corn -0.569 MM acres to 89.598

            Soy +2.418 MM acres to 92.560

The USDA is scheduled to issue its annual Prospective Plantings report today (29 Mar) at 1200 EDT. The market expects corn acreage to fall and soybean acreage to rise. We agree, on the basis of our modeling of the report. Our corn acreage change is in line with market expectations, whereas our soybean acreage is on the high side of the range of forecasts.

We have modified a successful University of Illinois-Champaign linear regression model to include data on Corn Belt rainfall in the months prior to the report, arriving at a somewhat more statistically significant result.

Gro Intelligence’s data and analysis product “Gro” allows subscribers to easily build models of USDA reports and other agricultural phenomena with global land- and satellite-based data organized in our proprietary ontology.