On Friday and Saturday, I attended the Allendale Ag Leadership Conference near Chicago, and there was some important information shared regarding the global grain and livestock market outlooks as well as a great look at weather expectations for 2013.

Since the weather forecast is probably what you are most curious about, here are a few headlines from the US portion of the weather presentation, but watch TheCropSite for more international weather expectations from Drew in the near future.

Drew Lerner, President of World Weather Inc., told conference attendees that there has never been back-to-back severe droughts in the primary US Corn and Soybean Belt, and he doesn't believe that 2013 will be the year to break that streak.

Lerner expects a much improved weather pattern for 2013 with rain expect to scatter much more normally with only some pockets of dryness. He said there is still a big question of recovered soil moisture and believes large moisture deficits will prevail in the Plains States and in parts of the western Corn Belt left over from the 2012 drought.

Lerner said he expects rainfall will be a constant worry in the Western states as it will not be abundant enough to restore soil moisture to normal. He said to watch for less spring rain than expected and a strong ridge of high pressure which could tilt the Central US notably drier.

So 2013 won't fix all of the drought conditions in the US, but Lerner does have high confidence in an early spring and expects heavy spring rains in the East. In the next six to nine weeks, the corn and soybean areas need 3 - 9 inches of rain to be back on track.

Aside from the conference, I wanted to mention another piece of headline-worthy news on the livestock side - Japan announced yesterday that it will now permit the import of US beef from cattle less than 30 months of age, compared to the previous limit of 20 months. This dramatically opens the market given that 95 per cent of the slaughtered US cattle would now be eligible for export.

Japan is currently the No. 2 market for US beef exports in terms of value and No. 3 in volume, valued at $969.8 million. The US Meat Export Federation (USMEF) forecasts that US beef exports to Japan in 2013 as a result of expanded market access will increase roughly 45 per cent in volume and value, reaching 225,000 metric tons (496 million pounds) and $1.5 billion. Click here to read more at our sister site - TheCattleSite.com.

Also, special thanks to the Allendale team for their hospitality at their leadership conference. Watch Headline News & Analysis for more coverage from the Allendale conference over the next few weeks.

Have a great week!