Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | Jon, my preliminary analysis of BShull's data leads me to a somewhat different result. It is difficult to encapsulate all the details of the shifts in acreage in one chart but we try (see below). I tried to plot the sequential change in the various crop acres between the different years as well as the overall change in acres between 2007 and 2013 (top bar). I see a different pattern. First there was the precipitous shift from corn to soybeans between '07 & '08 then the gradual rise of corn back to the 2007 level with the drop in wheat. It seems that producers respond very quickly to shifts in the various crop prices.
As to the contribution of CRP. A different study using satellite data (source??) showed that only about 3 million acres of CRP in the central corn belt went to corn. This is confirms your conclusion that CRP contributed only moderately to the total increase in row crop acres and is roughly consistent with the FSA data.
The result that surprised me is that the increase in acres is actually driven more by the increase in soybeans. In hindsight it makes perfect sense. We are today exporting 40% or more of our soybean crop. It is simply access to a market stimulated supply.
Lots to think about here. Thanks BShull for your efforts there are appreciated.
PS : When looking at the chart please realise that every segment to the left of zero is a decrease in acres while that to the right is an increase.
Added a chart that shows the net change for all the 11 crops listed between years and between '07 and '13
Edited by 1234 2/1/2014 14:37
 (Yearly Crop Acre Changes by Crop.pdf-page-001 (1).jpg)
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 Yearly Crop Acre Changes by Crop.pdf-page-001 (1).jpg (33KB - 42 downloads)
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BShull Acreage data.. (adjusted)
