Specialty Crop Pressures and USDA Catching Up
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson with your Agribusiness Update.
**For specialty crop farmers, 2025 has offered little relief from mounting financial pressures.
Markets that once promised stable margins are now defined by volatility, with production expenses outpacing price gains and exports at risk under global trade questions.
Despite contributing more than $75 billion in farm-gate value, over a third of all U.S. crop sales, specialty crop growers have fewer risk-management and safety-net options.
The result is a widening gap between cost and revenue.
**John Deere’s weak forecast for the year ahead reinforces the difficulty in predicting a level of recovery in the U.S. farm economy.
Bloomberg says that’s because of uncertainty around the impact of tariffs and trade deals, and the fact that the world’s biggest farm machinery maker fell as much as 5.7% as Deere’s first profit outlook for 2026 fell short of expectations.
This comes even after China began buying U.S. commodities again.
**The USDA has begun catching up after the government shutdown, releasing the latest sales data showing exports of corn and wheat as of October 16 were well above year-earlier levels.
Soybean sales, as expected, have plunged.
Accumulated exports of corn from the start of the marketing year were reported at 10.684 million metric tons, a 58% year-over-year increase.
Wheat sales June through October 16 totaled 11.355 million metric tons, up 23%.
