America's winter wheat sowings have fallen by an area bigger than Maryland, with soybean plantings set to fall too, as farmers turn to corn despite this year's late-season hiccups.

US wheat plantings for next year's harvest have fallen to 39.45m acres, Informa Economics said.

Plantings at that level would be the lowest for at least a decade, according to US Department of Agriculture data, which shows sowings for this year's harvest were 43.4m acres.

The estimate follows widespread observations that farmers are turning away from wheat in the face of sagging prices, which remain depressed by bumper global and US inventories.

Corn in favour 

Soybeans have also fallen somewhat out of favour, with plantings for 2010 expected down 500,000 acres at 76.99m acres, Informa said.

Corn looks the farmers' favourite, with sowings set to jump by 3.1m acres to 89.5m acres, adding the equivalent of another Ohio's-worth of plantings to the mix.

At that level, plantings would be their second-biggest since 1946, behind the 2007 total of 93.5m acres.

Nonetheless, the figure was marginally lower than the 90m-acre figure that analysts had been expecting, according to US broker Benson Quinn Commodities.

Informa also defied expectations by cutting its forecast for this year's harvest by 94m bushels to 12.97bn bushels, saying yields would fall marginally short of the previous expectation of 164.8 bushels per acre.

The harvest has been notable for its delays, thanks to heavy rain in both sowing and reaping periods.