This chart is from the USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS), USDA Agricultural Projections to 2034, released on 2/18/25.  The 2025 USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum occurred the following week, 2/27-28/25.  This series of events mark the end of the last US crop year and the start of the next one.

The Projections report is 120 pages and embodies US and global data.  The models are driven by economic assumptions, which USDA provides.  This document is highly dependent on the best data and modeling knowledge available.  It is looking back and looking forward from a point in time (the present).  It is available to farmers, grain merchandisers, public policy leaders, international competitors, and anyone who can access the link to the data.

To all who work in this sector of the industry with this data, this explanation is oversimplified.  But my experience is that most folks outside the industry do not understand the tools USDA provides.  All the data collected in the US and abroad, and made available publicly to most anyone who knows where it is, provides powerful market transparency.  USDA levels the playing field.

This works to everyone’s benefit.  It strengthens US agricultures competitive advantage.  And because it lowers the cost of doing business in US agriculture, this contributes to the US ability to produce agricultural products cheaper than other countries.  Countries that import US agricultural commodities and products do so because it is a greater benefit than producing the same in their own countries.

This chart today, shows into which market-specific uses corn is moved.

1. Until 20 years ago, the largest single use of corn was in livestock feed (Feed and Residual, here).
2. But with the rise of ethanol markets, Ethanol use rose to that number one position.  This rise and rapid shift in corn demand is highlighted in the green dashed box.  In less than a decade, the market model shifted.  Interestingly, about 25 percent of each bushel of Ethanol corn, goes into livestock feed as distillers grains.
3. The third data series is corn exports, which provide a significant market for US corn.

But this chart is in the Agricultural Projections report, because the last 10 years of each series in this chart is a forecast.  Based on the historical data in the chart and everything that USDA forecasters know, the market demand for these three markets is forecast out to 2034.

The value of these forecasts is not in the actual number.  The actual forecast number is important.  But the results, as well as the reasoning behind their forecast, is also valuable.  Many private sector analysts operate their own forecasting models.  They compare their forecasts with USDA’s as a reference point.  And then they often openly discuss why their forecasts differ from USDA’s.

It is fascinating.  But everyone learns, and the debates create better models and forecasts.

These forecasts are based on historical data.  But as the US corn crop gets underway, there is better real time data: at planting, as the crop progresses, and at harvest.  But in February, the forecasts are based on data and intentions.

In 2022, the forecasts based on data collected in the previous November and released in February, came out immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine.  Both countries are players in the agricultural and energy markets.  And the invasion was not included in the forecasts.  Even so, the 2022 USDA forecasts played their role and brought value to the 2022 production year.

This market infrastructure component of USDA is one of those deep industry relationships that isn’t a secret, but is often so complicated it is poorly understood by those outside the agricultural industries.

This is true about so many aspects of USDA data collection and analyses.  Farm payments, technology adoption, market shifts; all show up first in the USDA reports.

Thanks USDA for the thankless delivery of this beneficial market transparency!