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USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins last week said the U.S.-Mexico border will remain closed indefinitely, but pressure toward a reopening may be building with some Republican lawmakers and state officials urging officials to keep the issue in mind, Politico reported Monday in its Morning Ag newsletter.
“We continue to have those discussions with USDA about properly reopening the border sooner rather than later,” said New Mexico Agriculture Secretary Jeff Witte. “They understand the need and the impacts on commerce in both directions. There’s some things that have to be settled in Mexico, and reassurances have to be made,” he added. “But everybody’s on the same page that, in fact, the border does need to open.”
The report noted some Republican lawmakers have made similar arguments, with reopening the U.S.-Mexico border to livestock imports remains high on their to-do list, albeit with proper precautions. That includes House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania, who the report noted told Rollins in a hearing last week that it’s important to “have frank conversations about returning to a sense of normalcy at the border.”
Mexico’s beef market: Among Thompson’s concerns is how the extended closure of the U.S.-Mexico border is reshaping Mexico’s beef industry. That’s also a topic highlighted by Oklahoma State’s Derrell Peel in a recent Cow-Calf Corner newsletter, where he noted that Mexico has exported an average of 1.2 million head of cattle per year over the last 25 years, representing 14% to 16% of the calf crop. Meanwhile, Mexico’s beef production has risen an average of 2% a year in the last decade due to rising cattle slaughter and carcass weights.
Peel wrote:
- The Mexican beef industry has modernized and developed significant infrastructure the past two-plus decades. Cattle and beef trade between Mexico and the U.S. has evolved from a long history of cattle exports to the U.S. to include Mexico becoming a major beef export destination for the U.S., and recently with Mexico becoming a significant source of U.S. beef imports. The increasingly integrated trade relationship adds value to the beef industries in both countries. Not exporting feeder cattle to the U.S. means that more cattle are staying in Mexico to be finished for beef production. It also likely means that fewer cattle are being imported from Central America, which has been a source of supplemental cattle supply in recent years. Mexican beef imports will likely decrease, and beef exports will increase in the absence of cattle exports. Production systems and supply chains will continue to evolve in Mexico.
Stocks surge, oil slumps on Hormuz hopes: Grain futures managed to shake off a steep fall in crude futures that came after the U.S. and Iran reached an agreement that remains light on details to end the fighting in the Middle East and open the Strait of Hormuz.
Nymex WTI oil futures fell to a two-month low, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 468.77 points, or 0.9%, to close at a record 51,671.03. The S&P 500 advanced 1.7% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surged 3.1%.
Crop conditions update: Corn and soybean conditions saw a minor improvement over the past week. The corn crop was rated 68% “good” to “excellent” as of Sunday, up from 67% a week ago and in line with the average analyst estimate in a Bloomberg survey. Soybeans were rated 66% good to excellent, USDA said in its weekly report, also up a percentage point from last week and in line with expectations.
- USDA said 27% of the drought-ravaged winter wheat crop was rated good to excellent, up 2 percentage points from a week ago and the first improvement in five weeks. Harvest was pegged at 25% complete, up from 11% last week and ahead of the 19% expected by analysts. Oklahoma’s harvest was 73% finished, well ahead of the five-year average pace of 38%, while Kansas was 28% complete, ahead of the average of 8%.
- The spring wheat crop was rated 55% good to excellent, up from 52% a week ago and topping the average estimate of 53%.
The Pro Farmer Crop Conditions Index, or CCI, which compresses the USDA’s weekly crop progress report into a single, weighted, easy-to-track number that’s widely used to monitor the health and potential of US crops during the growing season, showed a 1.41 point decline to 372 for the U.S. corn crop as losses in Iowa and portions of the western Corn Belt offset improvement elsewhere, though little net change was observed overall.
- The soybean CCI rating declined despite the mild improvement in USDA’s national ratings, dropping 0.98 points to 366.86. The setback still leaves the crop in relatively good condition at this time.
- The Crop Condition Index showed HRW gaining 5.2 points to 239.85, while SRW increased 0.16 points to 365.28. Read all the state and national CCI ratings here.
Crush slows in May: The National Oilseed Processors Association said soybeans were crushed at a rate of 208.8 million bushels in May, according to Dow Jones Newswires, down from 211.9 million the previous month. That’s below what was expected from analysts surveyed by Reuters this month, which was over 216 million bushels. Stocks fell roughly 250 million bushels from the prior month, to 1.74 billion bushels in May.
Brazil farmland foreclosures surge: Brazilian lenders have gotten more aggressive in seizing farmland as collateral on bad loans, driving up the number of rural properties at auction, Reuters reported, citing data from aggregator website Leilao Imovel. The volume of those auctions jumped to 14,219 rural properties auctioned in 2025, up 30% from the year before, the report said. Properties seized and auctioned in faster out-of-court procedures almost doubled to 2,398 last year. Leilao Imovel surveyed about 7% more auction houses in 2025, so the data is not directly comparable, said co-founder Andre Figueiredo. But there is a clear trend showing worse financial strains on Brazil’s farmers in recent years, he said.
- “The volume of rural properties (at auction) has increased significantly,” he said, adding that regions focused on producing soybeans and other grains have been hardest hit.
Producers are still struggling to recover from a series of shocks, Serasa Experian’s general director for agriculture, Marcelo Pimenta, told Reuters. Bad weather, weaker prices for farm exports - particularly soy - and a benchmark Brazilian interest rate that climbed to 15% from 2% in five years are among other factors driving distress, he said.
Brazil ethanol executives applaud IMO decision: A decision by the International Maritime Organization defining Brazilian corn ethanol’s carbon footprint is a landmark step that could position maritime transport as a major future market for the sector, Reuters reported, citing remarks by industry executives. In May, the IMO defined the default value of Brazilian corn ethanol’s carbon footprint at 20.8 grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) per megajoule, specifically referring to biofuel produced from the country’s second, or safrinha, corn crop. The current average greenhouse gas fuel intensity in shipping is 93.3 grams of CO2e per megajoule, according to the IMO.
- “It was a historic and symbolic milestone,” said Gustavo Mariano, vice president of training at Inpasa, explaining that it consolidates the position of Brazilian and South American corn ethanol as a viable fuel for decarbonization.