The future of agriculture. This is a fitting theme for the secretary to announce something that we have been working on a usda called the agriculture innovation agenda. We are excited to share more with you this morning. I am joined in this room by many of you that are working to shape the future of our agricultural economy. It is important that we take stock, not only of where we are today but also of where we need to go to meet a growing Global Demand with rising standards of living in a time where producers are dealing with uncertainties in the farm economy and the conditions needed to farm, including the climate. Our chief economist, doctor rob johansson, will provide an indepth overview of the state of the farm economy. There is a lot to taken in 2019, it was certainly not a typical year. There were many factors influence in the economy including extreme weather, trade and policy changes an importing and exporting countries to name just a few. Following doctor jays top, the secretary will outline some of the amazing progress we have seen and should be talking about more in the agriculture sector. As i mentioned, he will also tee up with what we are calling on this call, to continue the trend of success that we have seen to meet the future challenges, including in doing our part to make sure that we are growing enough food to feed a population that is likely to grow to 9. 7 billion people by 2050, while at the same time conserving our Natural Resources for the future. That will be followed by a fire sight chat that the secretary will have with john hart knit, founder and ceo of as vijay g ventures. And investors focused on food and agriculture industries. Secretary purdue and doctor heart net will discuss the future of agriculture, challenges facing the sector and emerging solutions that could address them. Tomorrow, secretary purdue will be joined by his colleagues as ministers from argentina, canada and mexico, for a session titled feeding the world through innovation. They will discuss cooperative approaches to promote agriculture innovation and global trade as foundations of global food security. I recurring theme that you will hear through this conference is this, innovation. Innovation will be the key to sustaining the success of our sector. Here at usda, we are working to refrain this narrative on agriculture. Speaking of the future, i also want to acknowledge our through the University Students who are in attendance as participants in this years agriculture outlook form. They are here participating in usdas 2020 future leaders and Agriculture Program. Their attendance in this forum caps off a week long trip here to washington, d. C. The program selects 20 universities under graduates and ten graduate students based on essays on agriculture careers and challenges. The students major and agriculture related studies, including business, economics, communications, nutrition, food science and veterinary studies. Finalists are sub elected to universities, hispanic serving institutions and non land colleges of agriculture. The future leaders of Agriculture Program is supported by academic institutions, corporations and government institutions dedicated to promoting the education of the next generation of agriculture. This year, sponsoring an organization including the university of maryland and farm credit. This program is one of the many efforts that we have among usda, the 1862 land grand institutions, the 1890s historically black colleges and universities, the 1994 tribal land grant colleges and universities and hispanic serving universities. These partnerships could support Capacity Building initiatives and bolster education and Career Opportunities for students interested in a career in agriculture. I also want to acknowledge, as part of that, the ten graduate students that we have in attendance as part of the program. The Usdas Economic Research Service partner last year with the Farm Foundation to create a new Agriculture Scholars Program that takes these ten graduates level students of agriculture through a year long program of agriculture training. The objective is to inspire and train the next generation of agricultural lists interested in policy, commodity market analysis, agriculture finance and other applied fields of economics. Can we have all of our 2020 future leaders in Agriculture Programs attendees stand and lets give them a round of applause . Be sure to seek them out during the break because these are some of the sharp young minds that we wanted agriculture and i know you want as well. With that, i would like to say, here is our chief economist doctor robert johansson, who unveiled the departments outlook for u. S. Commodity markets and trade in 2020 and discussed the u. S. Farm income situation. Doctor johansson. applause thanks so much. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Thank you for those comments, mr. Deputy secretary, and of course welcome to the 96th annual agriculture forum. As the deputy just mentioned, we have a Great Program for you. Our theme this year as he just talked about, the innovation imperative. Of course, that has appropriate many ways, he just numerators some of them, i will just highlight two that are going to underline some of the comments and me today. First, 2019, it is year filled with uncertainty for agriculture in many ways and innovative responses were necessary by farmers to get through the year. Second, we know that innovation agriculture will continue to shape our future. What can we expect for 2020 . I know you are waiting with baited breath, so lets get to the numbers. Talk about three main themes today, 2020 is a big year for trade with our top agriculture partners and that is going to help sales and prices. Second, Crop Production should rebound from last year and we expect record crop, meat and dairy production. Third, the economy continues to show signs of stress, but there are other more hopeful signs. For example, low Interest Rates are reducing costs and straightening land bile use. Lets start with the global economy. In january, the imf projected slower Global Global economic growth. The downward revision from the pink to the dark red line on the slide there may not look like much but it equals a loss in buying potential of 1. 5 trillion dollars over that period. With almost all of that revision due to declines in growth an emerging economies such as india. Central banks from across the world have responded by collectively cutting Interest Rates 71 times across 49 different countries. Still, that being said, higher growth, higher Global Growth in 20 and 21 and 2022 is expected, which should increase our opportunities to sell abroad. Now those estimates by the imf did not account for the most recent outbreak of the coronavirus and china, which has been impacting much of chinese chinas economy. You can see here in january that the shanghai composite index fell by 10 in january, but the emergence of the coronavirus. It has since then started to recover. We are tracking this on many levels. Globally, we have observed significant obstructions we would expect less spending by chinese consumers. Particularly in the First Quarter. That may reduce the purchase of high value products such as meets. Private sectors forecast have lowered their estimates of chinas First Quarter gdp by as much as two percentage points. It is far too early to tell with the final impacts will be, but most of those forecasting operations expect the second quarter, third quarter, and Fourth Quarter in china to rebound. Any perceived risk of uncertainty often strengthens the u. S. Dollar. That is what we saw last year as a safe investment. Trade uncertainty and Interest Rate cuts kept the dollar strong in the first part of 2019, but over the second half of the year, the dollar depreciated against several currencies. We saw moderation zone tensions between u. S. And china. We saw a resolving uncertainty about brexit. We did see some Higher Oil Prices at the end of the second half of 2019, which supported both the australian and the canadian currencies. We also saw Interest Rate cuts, as i mentioned earlier, by some central banks, such as in russia which help support their currency. Incidentally, the coronavirus recently has led to an appreciating dollar that is now reflected in the slides. Despite the mixed economic signals heading into 2020, there has been an important progress in trade that i am sure we are going to talk about over the next two days. That is going to improve access for u. S. Agriculture in 2020 and beyond. Premade trade deals that will hear about today and tomorrow cover over half of u. S. Exports. The usmca will lower trade friction between our north American Trading partners and is expected to grow the u. S. Export market to more than 41 billion dollars in 2020. The japan u. S. Agreement will also help lower tariffs on more than seven billion dollars in u. S. Exports. More importantly, it will equalize Market Access for sector such as u. S. Beef and pork similar to those enjoyed right now by the eu australian, new zealand and canada into japan. They are large seven trillion dollar market. Phase one deal with china will boost sales to our main agriculture customer. However, there remains much more work to do such as Getting Better access to the nearly 1. 4 billion consumerist in india and our trading negotiators and administration president ial is working on that as we speak. Im going to put a slide on here and hopefully it works. It is the first time i have tried this. This show some of what we are expecting in trade and excited to see. This is a timeline of different economies at the size of the bubble reflects how much we are trading or how much u. S. Product they are purchasing from us. Their per capita gdp is along the ex access. There is a lot going on there. What we see . We saw three decades ago japan was our longest largest market at about eight billion. At that same time, our exports were concentrated mostly in the eu when canada. U. S. Exports at that time to china were less than one billion dollars and exports to india were only 240 Million Dollars. At the time, china had a gdp per capita of 700 dollars per person in india 600 dollars per person. This took a dramatic effect, we probably saw that in 1994. Canada mexico grew to 300 . In 1995, deputy oh officially commenced boosting marketing in 2001, china after the wto and u. S. Exports to try and expand almost hitting 26 billion dollars in 2014. U. S. Exports over the last past have decade have declined under increased foreign competition and in 2018, experts flow dramatically under the dispute with our Major Trading partners, bringing us to we will watch one more time and i will go to the next slide. [inaudible i just talked about all, this we can see china and yesterday, other china open to the global marketplace run for medically both and perhaps in the tpp as well as our exports in india yet to take off again highlighting the importance of getting into that market in the future where we today in 2020, u. S. Exports are forecast at 100 39. 5 billion dollars, thats up four billion from last year china were forecasting right now 14 billion for fiscal 2020 up from 10 million last year, that reflects Public Information available right now in phase one by the trade outlook for costs are based on the fiscal, here in this alpha also reflects and certainly that i mentioned earlier, top market in 2020 is currently speculating canada, forecasting 21. 5 billion. Mexico forecasts up to 19. 8 billion, you want japan slightly, down for fiscal 20, 20 again, just emphasize the calendar year phase one commitments, are not reflected in the fiscal year calculation, completely one question we get is word we expect the largest growth to be an important manned over the next ten years. Global demand for agricultural quantities especially emerging markets are expected to grow Global Exports prospect for additional u. S. Exports over the next ten years or strong growing at least 283. 6 billion dollars. Overall trade is projected to increase by 37 million tons of 17 big markets in mexico egypt and south america. Global starving trade is projected to increase by 36 million tons up 24 mostly in china bubbly trade is projected to increase by 30 million chance up 16 million africa, the middle east, and the world meat trade is expected to grow by not Million Metric Tons. Poultry up 28 , the fight 18 imports by 23 . All right lets turn to the 2020 crop and livestock sector, i know many of you are excited to see these, slides first lets recap though in 2019, what we saw and what drew a lot of attention and critiques, of u. S. Dea forecasts, as we all know 2019 was a very wet year, in much of america, spring planting delays, led to slow maturing corn and crops and now harvest what weather still hinder progress across wide areas of the corn, belted led to a surge and demand for growing capacity in some natural gas shortages, and price bikes occurred in many areas, in parts of north dakota and minnesota wisconsin, early heavy snowfall on top of what ground and it fieldwork early before the harvest was complete leaving significant acreage for harvesting as you know today. We are coming out with our early estimates for 2020 and this is what we had last year for corn in 2019. Our estimates are based at this time purely on supply demand fundamentals and price expectations, and we do assume porter unquote normal weather of course we know its fairly wet out there right now. The First Official estimates for the new crop here released in may and that reflects the planting intentions surveys that now skull released at the end of march in june last year we reduced our acreage and yields reflecting observed weather conditions at the end of june, nasa releases a gross report which was used in the july. Given the high corn prices and strong price signals at that time to plant corn is not surprising that farmers said they would play more corn and that was reflected in the july estimates. In August Nascar gang reporting monthly survey stayed at a clutch yield estimates coupled with administrative data and satellite information. As you all know in august service came in for producers noting fewer acres planted than expected but higher yields then have been forecast earlier overall the corn harm this was picked a 13. 9 billion bushels. Sadly above the july estimates significantly different from average trade estimate from many of you in the, room more than 600 million bushels. What do we see . Many farmers outside and outside analysts felt the usgs to most did not reflect the poor planting conditions that were seen on the ground in many states, but the estimates did reflect was what farmers were saying on their surveys coupled with satellite information as well as has been a straight of data from fsa and more of a. Market correction happened in august which the december features fallen by 50 cents a bushel for the frustrating farmers that were dealing with difficult planting conditions. One thing we heard this year is why doesnt the usda you settling information help them with their estimates of, course weve been using satellites for many years and weve been Getting Better each year as those status improve our ability to estimate Crop Production. You can see how improve satellite information improve usage of administrative data have help usda refine their estimates overtime, going back to the seventies, we havent seen a year when the corn Crop Forecast in august was more than 7. 5 off since 1995. And the deviation has been less than 5 over the past five years, again in the blue here is our estimates in august relative to the final in the orange, is the average trade estimate relative to the final. Lets look ahead now to 2020, big question out there is where we going to plant all of those . Acres are a major role crops corn sobering wheat cotton sorghum rice orlando its average nearly two to 57 million acres of the 2012 2014 period. Looking at the principal crop anchorage a bridge was down in 2019. By almost 16 million acres, which most of that coming from soybeans down 13 million relative to 2018. So again looking across the United States, we saw significant planting, prevent plant and unplanned today acres, in 2019 relative to 20, 18 so where were going to put those acres this year we would expect a good portion of those to go to court so points in 2020, lets look at what the price fundamentals are. We look at global stocks relative to use efforts to see what we think about upcoming demand for those commodities. And we can see strengthening in the stocks for pointed so it means relative to each advice we would expect larger returns piece of pieces commodities for corn and soybeans, similarly we expect growing Global Demand for various dies increasing animal proteins to continue to stimulate demands for grains and soybeans is not just the United States that are proving their output but brazil is optimizing their land as well utilizing double cropping, resulting and more soybean acres and a second crop or now is overtaken results for season. Crop Current Record production and brazil pegged at roughly four billion bushels of corn 4. 6 billion bushels of soybeans, in addition planting decisions will be affected by a number of other factors, such as expectations about trade and tariffs, prices compared with rising costs current prices price to a large u. S. Corn crop there been four here with those in addition we know that local demand and costs will drive regional plantings, for exampl