Farms swapping corn for soy

Pat Swanson, who runs a crop-insurance company and farms 1,800 acres with her husband near Ottumwa, said they plan to switch 100 acres that would have been corn this year to soybeans.

'The price is very attractive and soybeans are a lot less expensive to plant,” Swanson said. 'Our biggest growers with financial stress and smaller farmers will plant more soybeans this year.”

Planting decisions for corn and soybean farmers are a bit of a no-brainer this year. After confronting the prospects of losses on both crops in 2016, soybeans are now more profitable, which means the world's largest grower may harvest a record crop for a second straight year.

While corn still is king - it's the largest U.S. crop by value and volume - farmers from North Dakota to Texas are preparing to use more of their land on soybeans instead. That's because cash prices have jumped 9.2 percent since the 2016 harvest, creating the widest premium over corn in 29 years, and the oilseed is cheaper to grow.

'It's the difference between choosing to operate in the black or in the red,” said Jon Mutschler, 48, who farms 2,500 acres in Minnesota with his wife and son. 'The market is telling us to plant soybeans.”

Mutschler will sow 55 percent of his land with corn, down from 67 percent last season, and boost soybeans to 45 percent from 33 percent.

Seed technology that combats drought, bugs and disease is helping farmers produce record amounts of corn and soybeans on every acre, but demand prospects are better for soybeans used to make animal feed, cooking oil and biofuel.

Rising global consumption of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy has doubled the amount of soy-based meal in animal feed since 2000. Most of that growth occurred in China, the biggest pork producer, where soybean imports have doubled in the past eight years.

Soybean prices in 2016 posted the first annual increase in four years, and they are up in 2017. To maximize revenue and take advantage of the rally, American farmers probably will expand soybean planting 5.8 percent to a record 88.27 million acres, the third increase in four years, according to a Bloomberg survey of 25 trading firms and analysts.

Corn sowing may fall 3.6 percent to 90.77 million acres, the biggest drop in three seasons.

Earlier this year, farmer surveys by researchers Farm Futures and AgriSource Inc. signaled the United States will sow more land with soybeans than corn for the first time since 1983. Most will be planted in May and June and harvested in September and October.

After polling more than 2,000 growers in six Midwest states in January, AgriSource projected an 8.1 percent jump to 90.2 million, more than the 89.7 million planned for corn.

The Department of Agriculture will release updated planting estimates at its annual outlook conference that was set to begin Thursday in Washington, D.C. In November, the USDA's preliminary forecast was for an increase to 85.5 million acres.