U.S. Grain Farmers Record Third-Best Export Year

WASHINGTON, DC – Despite trade disruptions, U.S. grain exports in all forms enjoy the third-best year. According to data released by USDA and compiled by the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), American farmers cashed in on almost 4.2 billion bushels to foreign buyers. Unfortunately, 2019 will be 11 percent lower than the previous year – which was an all-time high. Grains in all forms represents the total volume of exported corn, sorghum, barley, distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS), corn gluten feed, corn gluten meal, ethanol and meat products into corn equivalents, which offers a different and more holistic view of the amount of feed grains produced by farmers domestically and consumed by overseas customers. Decreased exports were particularly pronounced for corn and sorghum where the declines represented 92 percent of the overall 13.3 million-ton reduction for the marketing year. While export declines were fairly widespread over all ten product sectors, other categories did not suffer as much. The best performance was in pork, beef and poultry exports, which collectively showed a slight gain, reaching 23 million tons (905 million bushels) in corn equivalent, and together represented 21 percent of the total. The bright spot for American farmers were exports to Mexico, which increased 2 percent to set a new record high of 25.6 million tons (one billion bushels). This success, however, was overshadowed by the dramatic 81 percent decline in exports to China 2016, with shipments totaling just 2.7 million tons (106 million bushels) in 2018/2019.