Grain traders are right to doubt that corn acres will significantly retreat from last year’s near record, say economists and seed industry experts.
“I really think we’ll see a 95 to 96 million acre corn crop planted, which is not much off what we grew this past year,” Gene Hagedorn, Beck’s seed advisor for southwest Indiana, told Pro Farmer (watch full video interview below). Producers planted 98.8 million acres of corn in 2025, the highest since 1936, according to USDA.
The flip of the calendar to a new year typically kicks off a price tug-of-war, primarily between corn and soybeans, known as acreage competition. It comes as producers decide whether to maintain a 50-50 rotation or favor one crop over the other based on expected profit margins.
Farmers, perhaps presciently worried about an outsize trade-war impact on soybeans, clearly favored corn in 2025. Crop rotations will likely dictate a return of some of those acres to soybeans, but many farmers in the most highly productive corn-producing regions of the Corn Belt are likely to stick with the crop on a significant number of acres.
“We tend to see more continuous corn, especially when markets are favoring corn, arguably like they have been over the past few years,” said Chad Hart, professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State University, in an interview.
The focus is typically on the corn/soybean ratio – the price of the November soybean contract divided by December corn. The ratio was below 2.4 Wednesday morning, below the important 2.5 threshold, above which economics are seen to begin favoring soybeans over corn.
At times, however, the lower input costs involved in growing soybeans can offer producers a way to save money when finances are tight, said Hart. That said, continuous corn became more prevalent during the ethanol boom of 2007 to 2012 before backing off in the 2013-2019 downturn. Now, corn-on-corn is seeing another resurgence, he said.
Hagedorn said the appeal of continuous corn varies by region. The I-70 corridor has seen producers over the last five years produce soybeans in the 70-to-90-bushel an acre range, a level that leaves the profit margin roughly equal to corn. Those producers are likely to stick with a 50-50 split.
Head north, and producers are weighing 50-to-60 bushel an acre soybeans versus corn that’s seen average yields in the 220-to-230 bushel range, he said. That makes corn much more attractive economically despite higher input costs, “and that’s really where we see that rotation shift,” Hagedorn said.
The ramp up last year from 90.9 million acres in 2024 inevitably means some producers were planting a third-year of corn on some ground, Hart said. Some third-year corn is likely again this year, though those producers likely went ahead and applied fertilizer in the fall in an effort to get ahead of the known nutrient-deficiency challenges associated with a continuous crop, he said.
More broadly, farmers largely know what they’re going to with around 80% of their ground, leaving around 20% up in the air, Hart said. He expects corn acres to fall back modestly to around 95 million in 2026, in line with USDA’s trend estimates. Crop insurance considerations, meanwhile, often reinforce a shift in acres once program details become available.
Hagedorn agreed the bulk of planting decisions have been made or will be made soon. “After you get past Valentine’s Day most growers have their plan in place and they stay there,” he said. “It’s really funny how everybody talks about how March can change that. I’ve been doing this in the seed industry for 22 years, there’s very little change after that date.”
The one exception, he said, is in the Delta, where producers have more options, including rice, cotton and peanuts. But depressed prices for those crops aren’t offering much competition, he said.
“That’s the area where the decision really doesn’t firm up until a couple weeks before they begin planting compared to the rest of the country,” Hagedorn said.