News Updates SOUTH AFRICAN MAIZE DEFICIT: IS IT REAL? Recent shipments of corn from Romania to South Africa reportedly were needed to cover the latter's expected shortage of corn that was caused by very high exports in 2011. However, now we see that another 400,000 MT of South African maize from current stocks has been sold to Mexico, which makes us wonder how bad the deficit is. Perhaps this incident was more a case of selling to Mexico at an attractive price and then importing corn at a much lower price. Is there really a corn deficit in South Africa, or is this just an opportunity for profit? EBRD INVESTMENT Earlier in 2011, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it would expand its program to include agricu...
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What You Need to Know Today: Declining crop conditions ratings and shaky results from the Pro Farmer crop tour sent grains sharply higher on Tuesday. The Pro Farmer tour in Ohio pegged the state yield at 180.18 BPA, about 5.5 BPA below the tour’s 2025 estimate. Similarly, the Pro Farmer...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Egypt is the largest importer of Brazilian maize in the first six months of 2026. Egypt imported about 28.4 percent of maize exports, or about 1.7 million MT. Iran was the third-largest importer at 14.5 percent, or 900,000 MT, fol...
Based on a Depression-era statute, President Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of exports to the U.S., or about 5.2 percent of the $383 billion worth of goods the U.S. imported from Canada in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Of that total, about $39.3 billion was agricu...