Corn was the big winner in Monday’s USDA prospective plantings report, with expected US acreage expected to account for just under one-third of the total area devoted to principal crops this year.
American farmers intend to plant 95.3 million acres of corn in 2025, an increase of 4.7 million acres or about 5% from a year earlier, the report showed. If realized, corn would swallow up almost 31% of the estimated 309.9 million total combined acres expected to be planted to the 22 so-called principal crops, ranging from everything from corn to potatoes to proso millet.
That would mark corn’s highest share of total principal crop acres since at least 1993, when the metric was first available from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, American Farm Bureau economist Betty Resnick said in a market Intel article on Tuesday.
In absolute terms, corn planted area in 2025 would also be the highest since 2013 and the third highest since 1944, Resnick added.
On the other hand, soybeans and cotton were the two crops forecast to see the largest year-over-year declines in planted area in 2025 (as seen on the Farm Bureau graphic below). At 83.5 million acres, soybean planted area is seen down 4.7 million acres or 4% from last year, while cotton area is expected to fall about 1.3 million acres or 12% to 9.87 million.
Cotton has been facing very poor profitability for several years now and is among the crops with the highest percentage of production exported, making it very vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs, Resnick noted.
Total acres for US principal crops in 2025 are estimated to be down 1.3 million or 0.4% from 2024’s final planted acres. It is the smallest March intended planted area for principal crops since at least 2017, and the first time that acres have declined in back-to-back years, Resnick said.
