US expecting boom in Agricultural Export
The USDA thinks world markets are going to be good for U.S. agricultural exports in 2021. Their latest projections show we will sell about $164 billion worth of farm products around the globe this year—up $28 billion, or 21% from 2020. Our current best exporting year was 2014 when we sold just over $152 billion worth of farm products around the world. A big reason for the USDA’s optimism is their expectations that China will be buying record amounts of U.S. farm goods this year to the tune of $35 billion.
The ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, Congressman Glen Thompson of Pennsylvania, has re-introduced his Whole Milk for Healthy Kids bill. The bill would put whole milk back in schools that take part in the federal school lunch program. Currently those schools are only allowed to serve skim or 1% milk. The Department of Health and Human Services reviews feeding guidelines every 5 years and Thompson wants to make sure the Department has sound science about the benefits of whole milk for growing children. He also added that Michelle Obama gets a lot of the blame, but she had nothing to do with taking whole milk out of schools. It was Congress that did it.
USDA economists will release the June World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates later today. And it will be interesting how the grain trade responds since the ongoing dry weather is probably changing harvest numbers faster than these reports can respond. Still the latest Dow Jones estimates based on a survey of analysts show the corn crop this year will be just over 15 billion bushels based on yields of 179 and a half bushels an acre. Traders also expect new crop ending corn stocks would fall 93 million bushels to 1.4 billion. For soybeans, the trade estimates a crop of just over 4.4 billion bushels—up 9 million bushels from earlier estimates. That would be on yields of 50.8 bushels an acre.
The dairy breakfast schedule continues to be busy this weekend. Tomorrow it’s the drive thru Breakfast in the valley in Eau Claire with today being the last day to order the food boxes at the Eau Claire area Chamber of commerce. Saturday, it’s on farm breakfasts in Trempealeau and Pepin county breakfasts. On Sunday there will be another drive thru breakfast in Taylor County at the fairgrounds in Medford as well as an on farm breakfast just outside Neillsville at Opelt dairy.
Source: https://www.weau.com/2021/06/10/usda-expecting-big-year-ag-exports/