USDA Specialty Crop Insurance and May Pork Exports Higher

**The USDA is expanding insurance coverage options for specialty crops and other actual production history crop programs.

Through the Risk Management Agency, it will expand the availability of enterprise units to crops where they were previously not available, giving ag producers greater options to manage risk.

An enterprise unit allows a producer to insure all acres of the insured crop in the county together, as opposed to separating the acreage for insurance.

**Led by another outstanding month in Mexico and robust demand for variety meat, the U.S. Meat Export Federation reports, exports of U.S. pork continued to gain momentum in May.

While well below the record-large volume and value posted in May of last year, beef exports improved from April and were the second largest, behind March of this year.

May pork exports were up 16% from a year ago, the ninth largest on record.

**For those whose primary experience with corn is the butter-drenched cob variety, it might come as a surprise that other forms of sweet corn are in trouble.

A new analysis shows sweet corn production for frozen and canned products has been steadily shrinking over the past 27 years.

Study author Marty Williams says, we saw a decline in acreage throughout production areas in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest, where most sweet corn production happens.