U.S. food and ag sales to Mexico surged by 7% during the 2024 fiscal year, making the North American neighbor the No. 1 ag export customer, according to Census Bureau data tracked by the USDA. China, the leader since the end of the Sino-U.S. trade war, fell to third place, behind Canada, in export purchases.
Shipments to Mexico totaled $30 billion, an increase of $2 billion from 2023, with purchases that included a record 24.5 million metric tons of corn, 40% of all U.S. corn exports for the year. Canada bought $29 billion and China $25.7 billion of American-grown food and ag products.
Together, Mexico and Canada accounted for one-third of U.S. food and ag exports of $173 billion for the year. And they were forecast to repeat as the top two markets in fiscal 2025, with China again in third place. Brazil has gained a larger share of the ag import market in China.
Corn, soybeans, dairy products, and pork were the leading U.S. farm exports to Mexico.
A ruling is expected by the end of the year on the U.S. challenge of Mexico’s ban on imports of genetically engineered white corn, used in making tortillas, a staple food in the country. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October, has laid out a plan for food sovereignty that includes larger domestic production of non-GE white corn and beans. “It’s about producing what we eat,” she said.
“U.S. corn volume to Mexico in [fiscal 2024] is the largest single-year trade volume to any destination in history and accounted for just over 40% of total U.S. corn exports,” said a USDA circular on the world grain market last week. The United States supplied almost all of Mexico’s imported corn, it said. Demand was up because drought slashed the domestic corn crop. A larger crop was forecast this year but imports would remain high, at 24 million metric tons.
“Mexico is currently considering a constitutional amendment that would ban the use of genetically-engineered [GE] corn for human consumption or cultivation and would require that GE corn kernels imported for other purposes, such as animal feed, first be ‘broken’ [cracked],” said the USDA circular. “Despite the uncertain legal environment, at present, demand for corn by Mexican end users is expected to remain robust.”
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department lowered its estimates of the U.S. corn crop to 15.143 billion bushels and the soybean crop to 4.461 billion bushels due to dry weather at the end of the growing season. The corn estimate was cut by 60 million bushels and soybeans by 121 million bushels on lower yields per acre. The corn crop, by a hair, would be the third-largest and soybeans the second-largest on record.
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