More corn acres equals record soybeans?

In taking a look at the numbers from today's acreage report, a few things come to mind.

For example, DTN's Chris Clayton makes a good point at the bottom of this post on indirect land use:

How is it supposed to go again, according to the believers of indirect land use change? Land-use shifts in the U.S. due to ethanol production, causes more corn, lower soybeans, causes more soybean acres to Brazil, leading to deforestation in that country. Well, we've seen that soybean acreage in Brazil has actually stagnated in recent years.

Now comes today's crop report. This year's corn planting is projected at 87.04 million acres, the second-largest corn acreage since 1946, DTN's Pat Hill reports. But USDA also projects soybean acreage at 77.48 million acres, the largest soybean crop in history.

That's right - the second-largest corn planting since the 1940s is occurring at the same time we're seeing the largest soybean plantings in U.S. history. Hmmm. Maybe a group of scientists is right.

Of course the big jump in corn acres - about 3 million more than what analysts were expecting - drove corn prices down the limit today. New crop soybeans were also down as the trade tried to figure out what to make of the numbers.

Farmers today
In today's report, USDA had a good couple of lines that demonstrate how quickly and efficiently that American farmers can get a crop in the ground:

On May 10 corn planting was 48% complete, down 23 points from [the five-year] average. In late May, however, drier conditions allowed farmers to make rapid progress. Farmers reported that 97% of the intended corn acreage had been planted at the time of the survey interview, compared with the 10-year average of 98%.

Biotech acres
USDA also included a breakdown of the biotech varieties planted in its report.

For corn, Bt varieties make up 17 percent of the acres (same as last year), herbicide resistance varieties make up 22 percent (down 1 point) and stacked varieties make up 46 percent (up 6 points). That means 85 percent of all corn planted this year is biotech in some form – up from 80 percent last year.

On the soybean side, 91 percent of all acres are herbicide resistant – off 1 point from last year.

And, just for the record, 88 percent of all cotton is biotech, too, up 2 points from last year.