US farmers are to lead the world into a year of record corn plantings, deterred from wheat by its weaker profitability prospects, the International Grains Council has said.

The intergovernmental group, in its first public figure for 2010-11 world corn sowings, pegged them at 156m hectares.

The 2% rise would be spearheaded by a "significant" increase in the US, the world's biggest corn grower, which is in the early stages of sowings.

The crop was "currently more profitable" than spring wheat, the council said in a monthly report, cutting by 1m tonnes to 658m tonnes its forecast for global wheat production in 2010.

Weather setbacks 

However, the briefing stopped short of forecasting whether corn production would rise in line with acreages, while noting that plantings "may be delayed" in Europe and the US "after the prolonged wintry conditions".

Cold weather also looked likely to hold back spring wheat plantings in the Black Sea states and America's northern Plains region.

And "unfavourable" hot and dry conditions had dented prospects for wheat crops in the north of India, the world's second biggest producing country after China.

Nonetheless, India's harvest - and that in China, where crops had enjoyed rain – would be sufficient to drive world stocks of the grain 2m tonnes higher to 199m tonnes by the end 2010-11, the highest for nine years.

Stocks at that level would be 67% higher than those in 2007-08, when thin inventories helped drive the spike in grain prices.

Record harvest 

The council also raised by 3m tones to a record 800m tonnes its estimate of the world's 2009-10 corn harvest,

"Favourable weather increases the production forecasts for Argentina and South Africa," the council said.