USDA’s Corn Prevent-Plant Report Validates Gro Model’s Forecast From May

The USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) initial estimate for US corn prevent plant acres validated Gro’s forecast model, which has been calling since mid-May for a big jump in year-over-year corn prevent plant acres due to this spring’s adverse weather conditions in the US Corn Belt. 

The FSA estimated in its Monday report that 2.3 million acres of corn were prevented from being planted in the 11 main corn-growing states. That projection was in line with Gro’s Corn Prevent Plant Forecast Model, which Gro first wrote about in May. 

Gro’s machine learning-based model was able to foresee trouble as early as mid-May because its estimates for the number of acres prevented from being planted factor in daily data on soil moisture, precipitation, soil surveys, and other variables at the county level, which are then aggregated to the state level. 

The FSA prevent plant acreage data will be updated in September and every month thereafter until final numbers are released in mid-January. 

The FSA’s initial estimate for total prevent plant acreage nationwide was 6.4 million acres, up threefold from a year earlier. That includes prevent plant acres for all crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and others. Corn represented nearly half the total, while soybeans accounted for 15%. 

The FSA’s state-level data reflected nuances that Gro’s Prevent Plant Forecast Models for US corn and soybeans, which are available to Gro Premium subscribers, picked up at the start of the growing season, namely that the cold and wet conditions that dominated Upper Midwest portions of the Corn Belt this spring would have an outsize impact on planting delays and prevent plant acres. 

At 2.31 million acres, North Dakota’s 2022 prevent plant acreage alone represented nearly one-third of the US total. Corn accounted for just over half of North Dakota’s total. South Dakota and Minnesota also had substantial numbers of corn prevent plant acres.  

Prevent plant insurance provides growers protection in the event they are unable to plant a crop by the final planting date or during the late planting period due to an insured cause of loss.