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Why Are US Farmers Switching From Corn To Soy? The Answer Is Obvious

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American farmers are planting more soybeans than ever this year, possibly supplanting corn as the most dominant crop for the first time in 35 years.

Prices of corn are falling, but soybean commodities are reaching record highs, meaning if farmers plant soybeans, they stand to make $47 more per acre than if they planted corn, according to recent estimates from the University of Illinois.

The last time farmers planted more soybeans than corn was in 1983, when a 20 percent decline in exports stymied corn profits, contributing to a mini-recession in the agriculture industry.

“When the market offers a better price, farmers will shift acres,” Dan Kowalski, research director at CoBank, a farm lending group in Greenwood Village, Colo., told Bloomberg News. “Farmers are looking at increasing soybean acres and locking in a small profit and that helps to take risks off the table ahead of the planting season. They have good reason to be a little more optimistic.”

“The market is telling us to plant soybeans,” Minnesota farmer Jon Mutschler told Bloomberg News. “It’s the difference between choosing to operate in the black or in the red.”

Another reason for the popularity of soybeans this year is uncertainty of trade with Mexico. Nearly a quarter of all grains exported from the U.S. end up in Mexico, according to the U.S. Grains Council council, and America exported record amounts of corn to Mexico last year. (RELATED: Organic Grain Farmers Are Not Happy With All The Cheap Imported Corn)

A Mexican politician, Senator Armando Rios Piter, said that if President Donald Trump goes through with his border adjustment tax, Mexico will stop buying U.S. corn. “If we stop buying their corn, farmers would have a good idea how important Mexico is,” Piter told USA Today.

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