The United States Department of Agriculture predicted last month that southern farmers this spring would plant 12.8 million acres of upland cotton, the type that accounts for the vast majority of the crop. That is a 19 percent increase from last year, when farmers grew 10.8 million acres. It also predicted that the acreage for corn and wheat would grow, although the increases would be lower than they might have been without the competition from cotton. On Thursday, the department will release an updated forecast, based on a survey of farmers.

The effect of the cotton shift is expected to be magnified internationally, as farmers in other major cotton-producing countries, like Brazil, also respond to the high prices.

Cotton futures prices reached nearly $2.20 a pound this month on the ICE futures exchange in New York, up from $0.73 a pound last July. The price is expected to fall by harvest time, but farmers said they hoped to get close to $1 a pound.

In the United States, the economics of growing cotton vary according to many factors, including regional differences and whether or not the land is irrigated. Farmers in several southern states said that at a cotton price of about $1 a pound, their profit could be roughly $200 to $500 more per acre than they could earn growing corn or wheat. For 1,000 acres planted in cotton, that means an additional $200,000 to $500,000 profit.

“It’s going to be cotton stalks everywhere,” said Travis Patterson, 44, a farmer near Spearman, who was irrigating one of his fields on a recent afternoon with help from his son Zane, 12, in preparation for planting cotton. “The landscape’s going to change,” he said, describing a countryside blanketed with the white of cotton rather than the more familiar green and gold of corn.