The USDA is out now with its new ag trade forecast for the 2025 fiscal year.

“It’s kind of a continuation of some of the short term trends we’ve been seeing over the last couple years.”

USDA chief economist Seth Meyer’s description of the new forecast, which is projecting 2025 US ag exports at $170 billion, down from this past year by just under four and a half. Seth Meyer says, of course, he’s not happy about the forecast. He’s not surprised by it, either.

“US export value has been falling since 2022, but of course part of that is because commodity prices were peaking out in ’22, right? So again, here exports falling in this situation isn’t necessarily a surprise perhaps, as commodity prices continue to moderate.”

At least for most of the so called bulk commodities, such as corn, soybeans and cotton.

“We depend a lot on bulk commodity exports for the fortunes of our ag trade, and right now, we’re facing a lot of competition.”

With many other producing countries having good harvests and ample supplies as well. But the export news for the US is not all bad. Seth Meyer says while sales of most bulk commodities are struggling, exports of high value products are expected to be on the rise, especially livestock products.

“For livestock, poultry, dairy exports, they’re forecast $700 million higher, and that gets us to a total of $39.3 billion and you got increases basically across the board. Beef exports, $400 million increase to $8.8 billion, and you got higher volumes are offsetting some of those lower unit values. So a little bit of easing of price more than offset by some growth in volume. And that’s a good thing. You know, we do a fair amount of business, high value business, in these exports, so we get a little bit of a trim in price and have some volume increases again of a different fortune for livestock, as exports go up $700 million in livestock, poultry and dairy.”

So those are the basic trends projected for US ag exports, down from 2024. Meanwhile, US ag product imports are projected up by over $9 billion.

“Leading to a widening of the trade deficit into fiscal year 2025.”

USDA projecting a trade deficit of 45 and a half billion dollars. Gary Crawford reporting for the US Department of Agriculture.