Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler sits down each week with Southern Farm Network’s Rhonda Garrison to discuss “Today’s Topic.”
Each year at this time, there’s talk about how many acres of certain crops farmers will plant. Recently, USDA’s annual Prospective Plantings report showed that North Carolina farmers intend to plant a little more corn and sweet potatoes, and a bit less cotton and tobacco, than they did last year.
Here are some notable numbers from the report:
Farmers’ decisions about what to plant are usually influenced by prices, production costs, and supply and demand. In the case of tobacco, 2014 was a big year, both in the U.S. and other countries. North Carolina had its biggest crop since the late ‘90s. That has led to a reduction in contracts this year, so acres will fall.
A better picture of actual plantings will be revealed when USDA’s acreage report comes out in late June.
Click on the audio player below to listen to Commissioner Troxler and Rhonda discuss farmers’ planting intentions.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Southern Farm Network is a division of Curtis Media Group.