AgricultureThe most intensive planting of corn in 75 years has done little to assuage fears a heatwave will wilt a significant chunk of this year's US crop.

The US department of agriculture said yesterday that US farmers seeded 96.4 million acres with corn this spring, the most since 1937 and 541,000 acres more than they told government surveyors in March.

But many of the biggest increases took place in states such as Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio, where temperatures above 38 degrees are now sapping life from stalks entering a fragile pollination phase.

Analysts say the heat will probably reduce the yields of each field, eroding the potential boost from higher acreage at a time when global corn stocks are relatively low. Federal officials said they expected farmers would harvest only 88.9 million acres of corn, lowering its estimate from mid-June.

“The acreage was won and lost in all the wrong places in this report,” said Nick Higgins, commodity analyst at Rabobank. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012)