Agricultural exports report for 2010

This week the final forecast for agricultural exports for 2010 was released.

107.5 billion dollars worth of exports are expected this year, due in large part to late season grain shipments, continued strong cotton, soy and livestock exports. Foreign AG Service Administrator John Brewer says the impact of Ag exports on the region is significant:

“For NC and SC ag exports are an important contribution to those states. They supported about 28,000 jobs both on and off the farm… and both those states did about 3.5 billion dollars in revenue for the fiscal year 2009. Those are our latest numbers.
For Virginia the numbers were still very good. 700 million dollars and supporting about 6,000 jobs both on and off the farm.”

Some of our region’s top commodities are broilers and hogs. Brewer says the outlook for these commodities for the remainder of this year is good.

“Starting in January pork exports have gone up 14% compared to 2009. So this is great news for NC/SC and the southeast. As you know, NC is one of our top pork producing states, so, this is great news. For fiscal year 2011 pork exports are forecast at 4.5 billion dollars. This is an increase of about 8% over 2010. As usual, Mexico and Japan are our two leading markets and we expect that growth to continue.

NC and SC are looking to grow their tobacco exports. Brewer says the forecast looks bright there, as well.

“NC is our top exporter with about 600 million dollars in exports in 2009. We forecast that for 2010 and 2011 we’ll stay steady at about 1.2 billion dollars. China and other countries in SE Asia remain our major consumers of our tobacco products and we think that demand will stay constant. We’re going to see about a billion dollars in export tobacco products. “
 

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