Editorial Article
Brazil Is 44 Per Cent of the Region and Mexico Buys Its Corn in Dollars
Latin America’s feed mills put 204.4 million tonnes of compound feed into the region’s animals in 2025 — 5.5 million tonnes more than in 2024, and 14.2% of the 1.44 billion tonnes fed worldwide, according to Alltech’s 2026 Agri-Food Outlook, which surveys 142 countries and 38,837 mills. On a revenue-per-tonne derivation that tonnage is worth USD 91.7 billion.
That is the regional number, and it is close to useless on its own. A feed mill in Mato Grosso buys corn out of a record domestic harvest, in reais, from a seller who is competing with an export terminal 400 kilometres away. A feed mill in Jalisco buys corn in dollars, on an import programme equal to roughly half the country’s consumption. The two businesses have the same equipment, the same nutritionists and the same customer base of protein producers, and their margins are set by completely different things: one by Chicago and the real, the other by the peso and the Panamá Canal.
This is what the country structure of the market actually looks like, and what it means for anyone selling into it.
| Country | 2025 volume | Growth | Perimeter and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | 89.904 Mt | +2.8% | Alltech compound feed. Sindirações reports 94 Mt on a wider basket (rações plus mineral supplements) |
| Mexico | 41.883 Mt | +1.2% | Alltech. Fifth-largest feed producer in the world |
| Argentina | 18.7 Mt | +2.1% | CAENA balanced feed and concentrates; the broader feed-equivalent measure is 35.1 Mt |
| Ecuador | 6.2 Mt | +10.7% | APROBAL, balanced feed for poultry, pigs and shrimp |
| Rest of region | 47.759 Mt | mixed | Residual against the Alltech regional total: Colombia, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean |
Brazil is a feed industry with a country attached
At 89.904 million tonnes, Brazil is 44.0% of the regional total and larger than Mexico and Argentina combined. Under Sindirações’ wider perimeter — rations plus mineral supplements — the figure is 94 million tonnes, and the association’s roughly 140 member companies account for about 90% of the national market.
What is more interesting than the size is the balance. Brazil is the only country in the region with a genuinely diversified species mix: 37.85 million tonnes of broiler feed (+2.5%), 22.5 million tonnes of swine feed (+4.2%), 7.76 million tonnes of beef cattle feed (+7.5%), 7.66 million tonnes of dairy feed (+7.9%) and 7.43 million tonnes of layer feed (+3.5%). A single-sector shock in Brazil moves a third of the regional market, not two-thirds of it.
And the direction of travel is not where the chicken is. The two fastest-growing Brazilian segments are the two cattle segments — beef at +7.5% and dairy at +7.9% — which is a confinement story rather than a poultry story. Brazil’s confinement census went from 7.96 million head in 2024 to 9.25 million in 2025, a 16% jump, heading toward 10 million in 2026. Every animal that moves from pasture to a feedlot is a tonne of feed that moves out of the farm’s own mixer and into a registered mill, where somebody invoices it. That transition is worth more to a feed company than a percentage point of national GDP growth, because it converts subsistence feeding into addressable demand.
The grain base underneath it is the region’s cheapest. Brazil’s 2025/26 grain crop reached a record 361.7 million tonnes (+2.6%), including 180.4 million tonnes of soybeans (+5.2%). The protein machine that consumes the feed is export-facing: 15.289 million tonnes of chicken produced in 2025, of which 5.324 million tonnes went to 153 countries for USD 9.8 billion — 34.82% of output — and 5.592 million tonnes of pork, of which 1.510 million tonnes went to 94 countries for USD 3.6 billion, or 27.01%. ABPA puts the two chains at R$205 billion of gross production value and USD 13.9 billion of foreign-exchange revenue.
A feed industry whose customer exports a third of its output has a demand curve that depends on other countries’ veterinary decisions. That is precisely what happened to broiler feed in 2025.
Mexico: 41.9 million tonnes built on imported corn
Mexico is the fifth-largest feed producer in the world at more than 40 million tonnes, and it is the import-dependent half of this region’s feed complex. The country produces 41.883 million tonnes of feed on roughly 24.5 million tonnes of domestic corn. USDA’s Mexico City post forecasts corn imports of 26.8 million tonnes in marketing year 2026/27, up 1%, against a production forecast that is down 3%; total 2026 corn availability is 53.7 million tonnes against consumption of 49.0 million.
That single fact governs the commercial behaviour of every Mexican feed buyer. Mexico’s feed industry buys its energy in dollars and sells its protein in pesos. It is why Mexican feed values per tonne sit above the regional average, and it is why the country’s largest integrators hedge grain rather than hedging feed — the exposure is upstream of the mill, so the hedge has to be too. A Mexican feed mill’s margin is a currency position dressed up as an agricultural one.
For a supplier, this is the most predictable market in the region to sell into and the hardest to price in. Volumes move slowly and in line with a corn import programme that is published in advance; the risk sits in the translation between the two currencies.
Argentina: the largest gap between what is fed and what could be
Argentina is the region’s most under-measured large market, because two credible measures of it differ by almost a factor of two. CAENA’s feed-equivalent method puts everything fed in 2025 at 35.1 million tonnes (+1.1%), of which industrial balanced feed and concentrates — the part a commercial mill actually sells — are 18.7 million tonnes (+2.1%). Both numbers are correct; they answer different questions.
The gap between current feeding and balanced-diet potential is the widest in the region. Beef cattle consume a feed equivalent of 12.34 million tonnes against a theoretical requirement of 152.8 million; dairy consumes 10.39 million tonnes against 12.12 million. Across species, CAENA computes a theoretical potential of 191.3 million tonnes. That is not a forecast — it is a measure of how much of Argentine feeding never becomes a transaction.
Argentina is also the region’s grain exporter, with corn production forecast at 54 million tonnes and exports at 37 million tonnes in marketing year 2025/26. Its feed industry competes for corn with its own export terminals, which means the domestic feed price in Argentina is set by the FOB price minus freight — the opposite of Brazil’s position in a record harvest year.
Ecuador: USD 829 a tonne in a USD 448 region
Ecuador is small, fast and the clearest illustration of what import dependence costs. Balanced feed output rose 10.7% to 6.2 million tonnes in 2025, split into shrimp feed at 2.47 million tonnes (+10.3%), poultry at 2.11 million (+7.6%) and swine at 1.29 million (+8.4%) — the only country in the region where aquaculture is a first-order feed category rather than a rounding item.
APROBAL values the whole complex at about USD 5.14 billion, roughly 4% of national GDP. Divide one by the other and Ecuadorian feed sells for about USD 829 per tonne — some 85% above the USD 448 regional average. That premium is not a margin; it is a freight and import bill. Ecuador imports its corn and its wheat, so the mill pays the world price plus logistics, and the producer pays the mill.
The country also carries the region’s clearest weather risk. Alltech attributes a 23–29% collapse in Ecuador’s 2025 corn harvest to extreme weather, which paralysed domestic poultry and pig production, and APROBAL puts the resulting corn overcost at about USD 150 million a year. A USD 150 million annual penalty on a feed complex worth USD 5.14 billion is a 3% structural tax on the country’s protein sector, paid every year that the Andean harvest disappoints.
Any analysis that reaches for a Latin American average per tonne should hold Ecuador in the other hand. The average is not a description of the market; it is a weighted blend of a corn exporter and a corn importer, and it describes neither.
The 47.8 million tonnes nobody measures
The residual — 47.759 million tonnes against the Alltech regional total — is where the growth rates are highest and the published data thinnest. Colombia’s broiler feed rose 14.7% in 2025 on technology upgrades and rising per-capita consumption, while its layer feed fell on weaker demand and Salmonella pressure. Peru’s layer feed rose 36% and Bolivia’s 27.3%, both technical rebounds after severe avian influenza in 2024. Chile’s layer feed grew 3.7% and its salmon output roughly 8%. The Dominican Republic’s pig feed was constrained by disease.
These are countries with real feed industries, real integrators and almost no comparable public disclosure. There is no Latin American equivalent of the EU’s feed manufacturers’ federation data and no MERCOSUR feed registry. Anyone who shows you a clean eight-country Latin American feed table is estimating at least the last four rows.
What a buyer should do with this
- If your margin is set by corn, you are selling into Brazil or Argentina. Watch the harvest and the freight differential, not the feed price. In a record-harvest year the mill’s input cost falls before its selling price does, and that gap is the only window in which a supplier can raise price without an argument.
- If your margin is set by the dollar, you are selling into Mexico or Ecuador. Hedge the grain and you have hedged the feed book; the feed price follows the import programme with a lag.
- If you sell additives, the address is Brazil. It is 44% of regional tonnage, it is the only country with a balanced five-species mix, and its two fastest-growing segments are the cattle segments where supplementation is replacing pasture rather than competing with a compound ration.
- Do not buy a Latin American average. The USD 448.45 per tonne figure used across this analysis is a derivation from the global market — USD 645.80 billion of 2025 value against 1,440.077 million tonnes of volume. It is a defensible central estimate inside a band of roughly USD 87–101 billion for the region, and it understates Ecuador by 85%.
The full country, species and cost structure of this market — with the valuation method, the sources per country, and an explicit statement of what the data will not support — is set out in Latin America Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033, which publishes 204.4 million tonnes and USD 91.7 billion for 2025 rising to 247.2 million tonnes and USD 125.5 billion by 2033. It sits under the global hub, Global Animal Feed Market, in the Animal Nutrition & Feed segment.
Companion analysis. The cost side of this market is developed in Feed Is 62.5 Per Cent of the Bill, and the corporate structure in The Meat Merger That Was Really a Feed Order. The press release, with the full market sizing and the valuation method, is Latin America’s Feed Market to Reach USD 125.5 Billion by 2033.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much compound feed does Latin America produce?
204.4 million tonnes in 2025, up 5.5 million tonnes or 2.8% on 2024, according to Alltech's 2026 Agri-Food Outlook. That is 14.2% of the 1.44 billion tonnes fed worldwide. On Pheonix Research's revenue-per-tonne derivation the regional market is worth USD 91.7 billion in 2025, rising to USD 125.5 billion by 2033 on 247.2 million tonnes.
How large is Brazil's feed industry compared with the rest of the region?
Brazil produced 89.904 million tonnes of compound feed in 2025, or 44.0% of the Latin American total — more than Mexico and Argentina combined. On Sindirações' wider perimeter, which adds mineral supplements to rations, the figure is 94 million tonnes, from roughly 140 member companies accounting for about 90% of the national market.
Why does feed cost so much more in Ecuador than elsewhere in Latin America?
Because Ecuador imports its corn and its wheat. APROBAL values the country's balanced feed complex at about USD 5.14 billion on 6.2 million tonnes, which implies roughly USD 829 per tonne — some 85% above the USD 448 regional average. Alltech attributes a 23–29% collapse in Ecuador's 2025 corn harvest to extreme weather, and APROBAL puts the resulting corn overcost at about USD 150 million a year.
Does Mexico grow enough corn to feed its own feed industry?
No. Mexico produces 41.883 million tonnes of feed on roughly 24.5 million tonnes of domestic corn, and USDA's Mexico City post forecasts corn imports of 26.8 million tonnes in marketing year 2026/27, up 1%, against a production forecast down 3%. Total 2026 corn availability is 53.7 million tonnes against consumption of 49.0 million, so the feed industry buys its energy in dollars and sells its protein in pesos.