OECD-FAO projections put Mexico at 10% of all corn traded worldwide by 2035, the widest gap between consumption and domestic production of any major buyer.

This article by Dora Villanueva originally appeared in the June 29, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico is on track to become the fifth market with the highest demand for corn by 2035, and will remain the top importer, according to forecasts by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In the Agricultural Outlook for the coming decade, the organizations forecast that in 2035 Mexico will remain the largest importer of corn, a grain that is a staple of the country’s human and livestock diet, with 10 percent of total purchases on the international market. Next is the European Union, with a 9 percent share of global imports; Vietnam, 8; Japan, 7; and China, 3 percent, according to the OECD and FAO report.

Although it is on track to be the top importer, Mexico will account for the fifth-largest global demand for the grain over the coming decade, with 4 percent, below the European Union, 5 percent; Brazil, 7; China, 24; and the United States, with 25 percent, which indicates that it has the widest gap between its consumption and its local production.

In the report on the Agricultural Outlook for the coming decade, the organizations also project what the live cattle market will look like if interruptions to exports to the United States from Mexico persist, given the screwworm plague detected in 2024.

The report assumes there will be normal animal health conditions over the coming decade and that even the effects of the temporary interruption of Mexican live cattle exports, given the screwworm outbreak, will dissipate completely and normal trade flows will resume in 2027, in part because of the sterile fly plant inaugurated in Chiapas; nevertheless, the organizations note that in a different scenario, with prolonged sanitary measures, the impact falls mainly on the movement of live cattle, rather than on the trade of processed meat, which would cause a reallocation of the fattening stage from the United States to Mexico.

Should the interruptions in the passage of live cattle across the border continue, the OECD and FAO forecast that, by 2035, gross beef production in Mexico will register a 6 percent increase over the course of a decade, taking 2025 as a starting point, and that meat imports will drop 11 percent.

It forecasts that live cattle exports will fall 100 percent and meat exports 18 percent, while domestic meat consumption would rise 2.5 percent and prices to the national producer would drop 5 percent. “These results reflect medium-term adjustments within the production system, rather than immediate changes in market outcomes,” the report states.

In general terms and at a global level, the report considers that improvements in productivity could increase gross agricultural income per capita by 9 percent over the coming decade, despite the rise in input costs and the relative stability of real agricultural prices. Nevertheless, given the volatility that agricultural markets do not escape, there is also a one-in-four probability that gross agricultural income per worker in 2035 will be 12 percent below the projected reference level, while in low-income countries the decline could be greater than 20 percent.

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