Utah Highlights

As of March 1, Utah growers intend to plant 60,000 acres of corn for all purposes in 2019, down 10,000 acres, or 14 percent from last year's plantings, according to the March 1 Agricultural Survey conducted by the Mountain Regional Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA.

Growers intend to plant 19,000 acres of barley in 2019, down 2,000 acres from last year's actual plantings. Winter wheat seeded last fall for harvest in 2019 is estimated at 130,000 acres, up 10,000 acres from the 2018 crop. Hay producers in Utah intend to harvest 620,000 acres this year. This is down 30,000 acres from the acreage cut for hay in 2018.

 

United States highlights

Corn planted area for all purposes in 2019 is estimated at 92.8 million acres, up 4 percent or 3.66 million acres from last year. Compared with last year, planted acreage is expected to be up or unchanged in 34 of the 48 estimating States.

Producers intend to seed 2.55 million acres of barley for the 2019 crop year, up slightly from the previous year.

All wheat planted area for 2019 is estimated at 45.8 million acres, down 4 percent from 2018. This represents the lowest all wheat planted area on record since records began in 1919. The 2019 winter wheat planted area, at 31.5 million acres, is down 3 percent from last year but up 1 percent from the previous estimate. Of this total, about 22.4 million acres are Hard Red Winter, 5.55 million acres are Soft Red Winter, and 3.55 million acres are White Winter. Area planted to other spring wheat for 2019 is estimated at 12.8 million acres, down 3 percent from 2018. Of this total, about 12.4 million acres are Hard Red Spring wheat. Durum planted area for 2019 is estimated at 1.42 million acres, down 31 percent from the previous year.

Producers intend to harvest 53.1 million acres of all hay in 2019, up less than 1 percent from 2018. If realized, this will represent the third lowest total hay harvested area since 1908, behind 2017 and 2018.