Ag Exports

Trade talk, as in agricultural exports. I have always loved the term and the concept of late bloomers. That's because it's personal. In college, I was so busy partying with my fraternity and playing college hockey that I forgot to go to class. Abysmal GPA. Then I woke up and got after it. Well, let's talk about ag. After a dismal start in fiscal year 2016, the pace of U.S. agricultural exports began to increase in the second half of the year and the rally continues. USDA trade analyst Bryce Cook talking about the first six months of this year "there was not a lot of good news" but then the rally started and Cook says that exports ended up $129.7 billion which was $2 billion higher than even his late season projections. It was still $10 billion below 2015 but for bulk products like corn and soybeans "there actually was an increase in the million metric tons of bulk items." If you compare agriculture's share of all products exported from the U.S. in fiscal 2016, "there was actually an uptick. In 2015 agricultural products made up 10% of total exports, whereas we moved up to 11% in 2016." Cook says we have had a strong start to the new fiscal year with October sales over $14 billion. In other news from Cook "The United States sold $129.7 billion worth of agricultural products to the world, $20.3 billion of which went to Canada, $19.2 billion worth of which went to China and $17.7 billion worth went to Mexico."