A rise in the projected use of corn for export and as livestock feed provides increased room for optimism about corn acreage, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) said recently.

“Many analysts expect growers to increase the number of acres planted to corn, beyond the 86 million estimated last month by the USDA,” says NCGA Chairman Ken McCauley. “We’re already looking at the second-highest acreage in over 50 years and market fundamentals are strongly signaling for growers to consider planting more corn to meet increasing demand.”

McCauley, a grower from White Cloud, KS, said he also took another look at his planting intentions and budgets following recent comments by Darrell Good, a University of Illinois agricultural economics professor. “The pendulum has swung decidedly in favor of corn at this point,” Good said in an Associated Press story on April 7. For a lot of the central- and northern-Illinois farms, he added, “corn pencils out easily” to be more profitable than soybeans.

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