USDA released their benchmark Prospective Plantings report showing intentions for 13.5 million acres of U.S. all cotton. The pre-report guesses were for something less than that, but 13.5 million is not particularly surprising given relative prices of cotton, feedgrains, and wheat. In addition, the continued drought conditions in the Southern Plains region should reinforce the agronomic and financial incentive to plant more cotton.
Assuming that relatively good cotton prices persist (and I hope they do) along with drought conditions (and I hope they don’t), there is a possibility of planted acreage to increase. Historically, the range of deviations between USDA’s March and June acreage reports averages about 4 percent (Figure 1). The reason for the deviations includes price changes, policy changes, dry weather, and wet weather. Some years the Prospective Plantings number turns out to be smaller in actuality. Some years there are increases from March to June. We saw this most dramatically during the dry Spring of 2011 when NASS measured 6 million acres of prospective planted cotton in Texas as of March 31. The actual planted acres measured on June 30 by USDA increased to 7 million acres, an increase of 17.3 percent (Figure 1). The conditions in 2018 are not as dramatic, but they are lined up the same way. I would not be surprised to see 13.7 or 13.9 million acres of all cotton before it is all said and done.
