According to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Illinois farmers planted 10.9 million acres of corn this season, 300,000 fewer acres than last year, and 10.7 million acres of beans, 350,000 more than they plan to plant in 2023.

“The acreage has surprised the corn trade,” Karl Setzer, market analyst at Consus Ag Consulting, told FarmWeek. “The big question is how much of that acreage 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 the RFD Radio Network. “However, it does remind us that these acreage numbers are actually trending from here in recent years and may even be declining.”

The USDA also released its quarterly inventory report on Friday with some pessimistic undertones. That report put 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 last year and above trade expectations.

“I think the inventory numbers reflect what we are trading now rather than the area in which we work,” said Setzer.

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 who want to drive 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.”