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Shining Light on Farm & Food Policy for 20 Years.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
The USDA announced Friday export sales of a whopping 1.36 million metric tons of U.S. new crop corn to China for delivery in the 2021-22 marketing year. The purchase comes amid growing concerns that dryness could stunt Brazil’s second harvest.
U.S. beef and pork exports hit the highest monthly values ever recorded in March, giving renewed hope to the red meat industry that the pandemic slowdown is mostly behind it, according to a new analysis from the U.S. Meat Export Federation.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai promised lawmakers Wednesday that work has begun to work out trade disputes with the European Union and the UK to create what President Joe Biden calls “a united front of U.S. allies,” but she largely left questions about China unanswered as the U.S. continues to study the situation.
Lawmakers, lobbyists and farm groups are anxious for the Biden administration to take its first concrete steps to begin negotiating international trade agreements and reform at the World Trade Organization to improve international access for U.S. goods as well as rein in China’s expanding global influence.
China's corn imports will likely hit a record-breaking 28 million metric tons for the 2020-2021 marketing year as the country restocks its domestic reserves and deals with rising demand for livestock feed, according to the Beijing office of USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service.
Some ag exporters have complained that they can’t get their products into containers or that the filled containers are sitting at port, incurring fees and risking spoilage, because shippers are sending empty containers back to Asia so they can be filled with imports and sent back to the U.S. as fast as possible.
Some advocates of the newly-enacted debt relief provisions for minority farmers have called it a form of reparations. But House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott, who is African American, strenuously objects to that characterization. He says the $4 billion just makes up for the fact that white farmers primarily benefitted from the billions of dollars in recent farm payments.
The U.S. ag sector really wants to know what’s coming next for the tenuous trade situation with China, but farmers and ranchers may have to settle for the status quo in the near future as the Biden administration takes its first steps toward dealing with the communist country.
USDA is re-starting the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and providing $6 billion in new forms of pandemic aid, tapping additional authority provided by Congress in December.
China is on a corn-buying spree. USDA has announced large daily export sales for the 2020-21 marketing year on four of the five days this week, culminating with a sale of 800,000 metric tons to Chinese buyers on Friday.
