A difficult planting season apparently did not stop U.S. farmers from planting large quantities of corn and soybeans, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) highly anticipated June acreage report.

Despite the wild weather swings of the past few months, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates acreage at 91.5 million acres (36.4 million hectares) of corn and 86.1 million acres (34.4 million hectares) of soybeans. The corn estimate is 3% below last year's figure but more than 1 million acres (4.4 million hectares) above the average trade estimate, while the soybean estimate is 3% above last year's figure.

In Illinois, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that farmers planted 10.9 million acres of corn this season, 300,000 fewer acres than last year, and 10.7 million acres of soybeans, 350,000 more than they plan to plant in 2023.

“The acreage has surprised the corn trade,” said Karl Setzer, market analyst at Consus Ag Consulting. “The big question is how much of it may or may not have been lost to flooding.”

Prevent crop acreage is not included in the June acreage estimates. Setzer and fellow analyst Joe Camp of CommStock Investments believe the numbers could be revised in later reports.

“The higher-than-expected corn acreage estimate is at odds with what we think about how the planting season is shaping up,” Camp told RFD Radio Network. “But it does remind us that these acreage numbers are actually trending from here in years past and may even be declining.”

The USDA also released its quarterly inventory report with some pessimistic undertones. This report estimated inventories at 4.9 billion bushels of corn, 970 million bushels of beans and 702 million bushels of wheat. All three estimates were well above the previous year and above trade expectations.

“I think the inventory numbers reflect what we are trading now rather than the number of hectares,” Setzer said. “But I think we are trading again based on the weather.”

Camp also believes that recent weather extremes will be a key factor in the future of the market.

“There's a real back and forth between the speculators trying to push the market down and the fundamentalists who might want to say let's wait and see,” Camp added. “There's a weather report that speculators might view as bearish because rain is coming across the eastern Corn Belt after a hot dry spell, while ignoring, if you will, what's happening in the western Corn Belt with all the flooding and lost farmland.”