If you happen to watch USDA’s “Flash Sales” every morning, you like what you have seen over the last few weeks.
Throughout the year we see times where we cannot seem to give exports away. It is those days that I find myself feeling like a kid staring out the window watching for friends or family coming to visit.
This isn’t one of those times. So, why are we seeing such robust corn sales recently?
Over a nine-day stretch, we saw 14 individual flash sales of corn totaling 4.44 million metric tons. (The 580,000 metric tons was for the 2025-26 crop year). Mexico has been the largest purchaser of U.S. corn buying 2.06 MMT for 2024-25. (They were the buyers of the 580,000 mt for 2025-26 as well).
The reason for these purchases from Mexico is fairly straight forward. Mexico has been in the middle of a massive drought for well over a year now. While the drought has subsided considerably from one year ago, the persistent dryness cut Mexico’s corn production significantly. This comes at a time when Mexican demand for animal proteins is increasing at a steady rate.
Mexico expands meat production
The USDA currently forecasts domestic meat production in Mexico will increase between 2023 and 2033 by 22% in chicken, 24% for pork and 25% for beef. These animals will require Mexico to continue to import sizeable quantities of corn, soybeans and soybean meal for the considerable future.
While Mexico does grow some of these products domestically, the terrain and climate are not the most suitable for row crop production on the scale that is needed. The U.S. is the beneficiary due to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the ability to rail grains into the country.
Just say yes to GMO
This brings me to my next thought on exports. Does anyone remember a while back when Mexico announced it would “pursue the total replacement of genetically modified corn products in Mexico by Jan. 31, 2024.” Guess what? That did not happen.
As of right now, Mexico is basically on par with their volume of record purchases form one year ago. The lesson here for me at least is that maybe we shouldn’t always believe what politicians say they are going to do!
Where is China?
Lastly when it comes to corn exports, it is important to note who hasn’t been active – China. Much like the last two years China has not been an active buyer. We’ll talk more about China in a minute.
A sizeable quantity of corn is being purchased by “Unknown.” When Unknown buys soybeans, it is generally China. There is a lot of chatter about the Unknown corn purchases this year, which currently amounts to 4.9 MMT (Unknown had 1.7 MMT on the books last year and 2 MMT is the “average.”)
Historically speaking, Unknown corn purchases generally came from Japan, while some in the trade suspect it is EU/Spain and others say China. Regardless of who it is, once these sales get attributed to someone it will greatly increase any of their purchases over last year.
China not only is somewhat absent from corn purchases so far this year (10,000 MMT thus far), but they also are well behind their 5-year average on soybean purchases from the U.S. And recent headlines suggest that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and UAE) are looking to sidestep the U.S. in future grain trade initiatives.
At the end of the day, the price of corn, soybeans and wheat will always be driven by overall supply and demand. The high prices of 2021-23 did their job of decreasing demand while simultaneously increasing supply.
It would be awesome to continue to see these daily flash sales popping up every morning. I’ll keep waiting by the window.
To contact Tyler Schau directly, call 701-987-6009 or call anyone with the AgMarket.Net staff at 844-4AG-MRKT.
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