La Jornada: Mexico will be the fifth market in demand for corn: OECD and FAO

Mexico is set to be the fifth market with the most demand for corn by 2035, and will remain the main importer, according to forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

In the Agricultural Perspectives for the next decade, the organizations predict that in 2035 Mexico will remain the largest importer of corn, the base grain in the country’s human and livestock diet, with 10 percent of total purchases in the international market. Then there is the European Union, with a 9 percent share of global imports; Vietnam, 8; Japan, 7, and China, 3 percent, according to the OECD and FAO report.

Although it is set to be the first importer, Mexico will concentrate the fifth world demand for grain in the next decade, with 4 percent, below the European Union, 5 percent; Brazil, 7; China 24, and the United States, with 25 percent, which indicates that it has the largest gap between its consumption and local production.

In the report on the Agricultural Outlook for the next decade, the organizations also project what the live cattle market will be like if interruptions to exports to the United States from Mexico persist, given the screwworm plague detected in 2024.

The report assumes that there will be normal animal health conditions over the next decade and that even the effects of the temporary interruption of Mexican live cattle exports, given the screwworm outbreak, will completely dissipate and normal trade flows will resume in 2027, in part due to the sterile fly plant inaugurated in Chiapas; However, the organizations point out that in a different scenario, with prolonged sanitary measures, the impact is mainly on the movement of live cattle, rather than the trade in processed meat, which would cause a reassignment of the fattening stage from the United States to Mexico.

Should disruptions continue in the passage of live cattle across the border, the OECD and FAO predict that by 2035, gross beef production in Mexico will increase by 6 percent over a decade, taking 2025 as a starting point, and that meat imports will decline by 11 percent.

It foresees that live cattle exports will fall by 100 percent and meat exports by 18 percent, while domestic meat consumption would increase by 2.5 percent and national producer prices would drop by 5 percent. “These results reflect medium-term adjustments within the production system, rather than immediate changes in market results,” the report states.

In general terms and at a global level, the report considers that improvements in productivity could increase gross agricultural income per capita by 9 percent over the next decade, despite the increase in input costs and the relative stability of real agricultural prices. However, given the volatility that agricultural markets are not immune to, there is also a one in four chance that gross agricultural income per worker in 2035 will be 12 percent below the projected reference level while in low-income countries the decline could be more than 20 percent.