Planting Ramps Up, Prices Hang on, and USDA Data Gets Hammered
Published: Friday, April 24, 2026
Central Dublin's busy O'Connell Street became a parking lot a week ago when Irish farmers and truck drivers parked their tractors and trucks on its River Liffey bridge to protest nationwide diesel prices that, according to the New York Times, "hit 2.11 euros per liter, the equivalent of more than $9.30 per gallon."
While U.S. gasoline and diesel prices are nowhere near Ireland's lunar level, the April 10 Consumer Price Index data revealed U.S. motor fuel prices in March alone rose 21.4%, a record-high increase for any single month since 1967.
Today's higher fuel prices will be the norm regardless when or even if a U.S./Iran cease-fire comes together, say market experts. "Crude prices rise like a rocket but fall like a feather," they report.
Fertilizer prices, another casualty of the U.S./Iran standoff, continue their climb. According to DTN's price tracker, early April prices for urea show a 34% increase in March while anhydrous ammonia rose 18% and ammonium nitrate prices increased 21%.
And like crude oil prices, no one sees any price relief anytime soon with planting season about to hit overdrive and supplies still squeezed by Middle East uncertainties and blockades.
The Department of Agriculture, however, isn't shy when it comes to predictions. On March 31, USDA released its always anticipated 2026 Prospective Planting report, its closely-watched first guess of actual planted crop acres. This year's numbers, like many years, contained a few surprises.
For example, USDA estimates 2026 U.S. planted corn acres at 95.3 million, down 3.4% from last year's 90-year high but still almost a million acres more than analysts saw coming. The surprise caught futures traders short and the additional acres helped push December's new crop futures 30 cents lower in the next two weeks.
Given today's still-climbing fuel and fertilizer prices, however, traders guess some of those extra corn acres may be planted to either soybeans or sorghum, two cheaper-to-plant alternatives for financially pinched farmers. USDA's bean and corn acre counters will give us that answer in their June update.
In the meantime, USDA estimated 2026 soybean acres at 84.7 million, 4.3% more than last year but about 850,000 less than market analysts thought farmers would plant given the war-fueled costs for growing corn.
Unsurprisingly, U.S. farmers continue to see wheat as a less-than-attractive alternative to corn and soybeans. The March planting survey shows 2026 winter wheat acres at a low 32.4 million acres and "all" wheat—that includes spring and Durum wheat acres—at 43.8 million acres, the lowest planted acres in 107 years.
In an even more eye-popping comparison, this year's anticipated total wheat acreage now shows U.S. plantings at only half the crop's record high planted acres—88.3 million acres—grown in 1981.
Overall, the differences between USDA's reported 2026 acres and traders' usually pretty good estimates again raises the "trust" issue between federal survey takers and farmers who are most affected by the market impact of USDA's projected numbers.
Questions about the report's veracity surfaced quickly after its release. USDA noted that it, too, was concerned: the "response rate" from farmers to its acreage inquiries was only 37.6%, the lowest rate ever for the annual survey. The growing divide, explained one observer, "shows that the relationship between USDA ... and U.S. producers needs rebuilding."
Agreed, but let's first stop tearing it apart because the only thing worse than today's constant undermining of USDA, its programs and crucially important data is no USDA, no programs and no data.
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