U.S. gradually losing share of world markets

Dec 19, 2023

The United States is getting beaten up in crop export markets that it once dominated, says an analyst.

Brazil is body-slamming the U.S. in corn and soybean markets while Russia is pummeling it in the wheat market, DTN lead analyst Todd Hultman told delegates attending the company’s 2023 Virtual Ag Summit.

“Each year that goes by, that competition is getting stiffer and stiffer and we’re feeling more of the pain,” he said.

Two decades ago, the U.S. provided 50 to 60 percent of world corn and soybean exports. That has fallen to under 30 percent for both crops.

Its share of wheat exports has plunged to nine percent from 25 to 30 percent. This year’s wheat export program is expected to be the lowest in more than 50 years.

Brazil’s soybean acres have more than doubled over the last 15 years to 113 million harvested acres. Corn plantings have risen to 57 million acres from 25 million over that same period.

“Last year, Brazil became the world’s largest exporter of corn for the first time ever and it looks like they’re going to maintain that lead by a narrow margin here again this year,” said Hultman.

The country’s corn and soybean acres are growing by two to three percent per year and there is no end in sight.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators