USDA bumps Nebraska corn acres to 10 million

In its acreage report released this morning, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Nebraska farmers planted 10.0 million acres of corn this year -- up 500,000 acres from it's estimate back in March. A year ago Nebraska farmers planted 9.15 million acres.

Good spring weather allowed farmers to get planting corn...and they kept on planting in response to demand for corn.

"Nebraska farmers clearly saw good demand for corn and responded to that demand,” Kelly Brunkhorst of the Nebraska Corn Board said in a news release.

Brunkhorst noted that 10 million acres is the most corn acres planted by Nebraska’s farm families since the early 1930s. It also surpasses the recent high of 9.4 million planted in 2007.

In addition to the increase in acres, Nebraska’s corn crop is off to a great start – with 79 percent of the crop in good to excellent condition. "We're encouraged by the progress and condition of the crop, and some sun and warm weather this week was pretty good timing," Brunkhorst said. "The potential is there for a good crop and hopefully the weather will cooperate."

On a national level, USDA said farmers planted 92.3 million acres this year, a 5 percent increase from last year’s 88.2 million acres and 7 percent more than in 2009 when 86.4 million acres were planted. USDA’s original estimate in March was 92.2 million acres.

USDA today also reported corn stocks. Nationally, corn stocks as of June 1 were 3.67 billion bushels, which is down about 15 percent from last year.

In Nebraska, there were 435.1 million bushels in storage as of June 1, about 16 percent less than a year ago. Of that total 190 million bushels were stored on farms and 245.1 million were stored off-farm.

“This is a good supply of corn for this time of year, and more than what most analysts had expected. Overall we’re in very good shape, with plenty of corn in storage and hopefully a good crop on the way,” he said.