2023-08-31 22:46:00
Hoy 19:46
During more than half a centuryAmerican farmers dominated the international corn market, shipping more of this essential crop than any other country to feed the world’s livestock, fill its stocks and make its processed foods.
But this changed. In the agricultural year ending August 31, The United States ceded the crown of corn exporter to Brazil. And you may never get it back.
In the 2023 campaign, The US will account for about 23% of world corn exports, well below Brazil’s almost 32%, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. It is estimated that Brazil will also maintain its leadership in the 2024 campaign, which begins on September 1. Only once in data going back to the Kennedy Administration has the US lost first place: for a single year in 2013 after a devastating drought. The US corn-exporting industry has never spent two years in a row in second place… until now.
Losing its lead in corn exports may sound familiar to American farmers, who in the last decade they also lost first place in soybean and wheat exports. Soybeans were the first to disappear, with Brazil taking the lead for good in 2013. The following year, the US also lost its lead in wheat, as the European Union, and then Russia, began to displace US farmers. in the global market.
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Why did Brazil displace the United States?
Behind this change there are a number of factors: rising costs at home and a shortage of farmland, the lingering effects of former President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, and the strength of the dollar. Currently, the US accounts for about a third of world soybean exports, a distant second behind Brazil. In wheat, it now ranks fifth, with a single-digit share of the world market.
The US’s steady decline and loss of competitiveness is a blow to a country that has long used food as a geopolitical force. At the height of the Cold War, it used its abundant supplies as a tool to prevent communism from spreading to developing countries, even supplying about a quarter of its wheat to Russia after a poor harvest in the early 1970s.
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“USA. it reminds me of the slow-boiling frog,” said Ann Berg, an independent consultant and veteran marketer who began her career at Louis Dreyfus Co. in 1974. “It has lost its grip, but it took 40 years.”
To be sure, the change in corn exports is not so unexpected: for years, the federal government has encouraged the use of domestically grown corn to produce ethanol, which is added to gasoline. Around the 40% of US corn goes to supply domestic factories that produce ethanol for use as a transportation fuel, although this demand will be threatened as more electric vehicles hit the roads. When mills aren’t buying, the US corn crop can also be stored in large silos or grain elevators for future use for years, waiting for better prices.
“In the case of corn and beans, what we’re seeing is we’re using a lot more at home,” said Gregg Doud, a former chief agriculture negotiator for the US Trade Representative during the Trump administration. “That’s not a bad thing. What is really happening here is that we are producing ethanol, using it to feed livestock, producing renewable diesel, and we are more energy independent in terms of fuels.”
Translated by Paulina Munita.
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