Most farmers in Michigan, the Northeast and Ohio will be following the national trend of more soybeans than corn this year. At least that’s what they’ve indicated to USDA.

If you missed out on last week’s Prospective Plantings report from USDA, it showed farmers are planting a record number of soybean acres this year and surpassing corn acreage — 91 million acres vs. 89.5 million acres.

Every state in the American Agriculturist region is planting less corn, while most states — except for Pennsylvania and New York — are planting either more soybean acres or the same as last year.

Why are farmers planting less corn than soybeans? A presentation on market dynamics by Farm Futures grain markets analyst Jaqueline Holland on Thursday points to much higher input prices, especially fertilizer, for corn; a lower-than-expected South American soybean crop; and good demand for soybeans as reasons farmers are favoring soybeans.

In fact, Holland pointed to Farm Futures surveys done at the end of last year that showed many farmers were intending to switch to beans and had done so quite early, making the Prospective Plantings report less surprising to her than others.

Ohio and Michigan both followed national trends with less corn and more soybean acres.

In Ohio, hay acres are down 1%, while wheat acreage is up 5%.

In Michigan, hay acres are up 1%, but wheat acreage is down 23% to 470,000 acres. Chris Betz, corporate hedger and merchandiser for Michigan Agricultural Commodities, says planting conditions were too wet for many growers to get wheat acreage in last fall, especially across the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, and this likely explains the big drop-off.

Other small grains, though, are also down — oats are down 27%, and barley is down 10%.

Robert Geers, vice president of merchandising for Michigan Agricultural Commodities, says June’s crop production report, the first big crop production of the growing season, should paint a clearer picture of where acres not planted last fall will likely be going this summer. While soybean acres are up, Geers says they don’t make up for the overall lost acreage across all crops.

Pennsylvania and New York each bucked the national trend of less corn and more soybean acres. Empire State farmers are also planting 8% less hay, 13% less wheat and 36% less oats.

Zach Harding, manager of Northeast grains for The Andersons, says he expected corn acres to decline because of high fertilizer prices and low seed availability. But the loss in soybean acres is puzzling, he says. Couple that with the loss of hay acreage and other small grains, and Harding suspects land is either being lost to development or other specialty crops.

Other states in alphabetical order:

Corn

Hay

Barley

Oats

Wheat