US No Longer Dominates Global Export of Corn, Soybean or Wheat

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Jesse Newman and Jacob Bunge, US Farmers Fall Behind New Powers; Bumper harvests in Brazil, Russia depress prices, imperil American growers. Wall Street Journal, Apr 21, 2017 (front page).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s ... d-powers-1492700574
http://news.morningstar.com/all/ ... w-world-powers.aspx

Quote:

"Brazil overtook the US as the world's biggest soybean exporter in 2012-13, according to the US Department of Agriculture. It's projected to be the second-largest corn exporter, on the heels of the U.S., this season. As of the last crop year, Russia now beats America in shipments of wheat.  It's a reversal for a country [US] that has long identified as the world's bread basket. America's share of global corn, soybean and wheat exports has shrunk by more than half since the mid-1970s [all about export, not production]

"Farmers produce three-quarters of the nation's food. US agricultural exports in 2015, the latest year for which data is available, generated more than $300 billion in economic output and directly supported more than one million jobs, according to the USDA.  Agriculture is among the few US industries that exports more goods than it imports

"Russia over the past decade boosted its wheat harvests by 61%, the USDA forecasts. Corn acreage has nearly tripled in Russia, and more than doubled in Ukraine. Brazil and Argentina have also ramped up output of the grain [by the same: increased acreage of planting].  Foreign farm powers in South America and Eastern Europe owe some of their grain-market victories to favorable exchange rates -- a strong dollar

"In the US, about one-third of the corn crop is used for fuel production [for domestic use; hence corn not exported], and conservation programs have removed land from farming.

"Brazil gave farmers the green light to grow genetically modified crops in 2003

"Illinois [is] the largest soybean-producing state in the US

Note:
(a) In print there is a graphic, which can be viewed in Ms Jesse Newman's tweet, which retweeted Ms Elizabeth Blackshire's tweet of the graphic.
https://twitter.com/jessenewman13
(b) The Mosaic Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosaic_Company

(c) "Bruno Gilioli, who grows soybeans near the heart of Brazil's vast grain belt * * * Using high-tech machinery and the advanced seeds and chemicals common on US farms, Mr Gilioli, 37, has pulled record yields from his 5,000 acres in Brazil's Goiás state.  'Inside the farm, it looks just like the US,' says Mr Gilioli, who wears an Iowa State [University] Cyclones hat * * * Brazil's agricultural growth-spurt began about four decades ago, as farmers were lured north to its sweeping savanna, known as the cerrado, by the promise of cheap land and climbing soybean demand and prices.  The region stretches over 500 million acres, an area three times the size of Texas and nearly 50% bigger than all the land in the US used to grow crops."
(i) Goiás
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiás
(paragraph 1 for name)
(ii) The "cerrado" is a Portuguese noun masculine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerrado
(map)