Increased Demand for Ethanol By-Product
Posted: October 23, 2008
Export opportunities for the ethanol by-product distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) are increasing as the industry continues to grow. That was the main message to more than 500 who attended the second the U.S. Grains Council’s International Distillers Grains Conference this week in Indianapolis.
“The reason we’re holding this conference is that we are confident the U.S. ethanol industry will continue to grow due to efforts undertaken by the National Corn Growers Association and state producer organizations over the last several years,” said USGC president and CEO Ken Hobbie. “Due to the efforts of U.S. growers to establish the ethanol industry, we made DDGS our top priority in 2006 and since then have seen DDGS exports exceed 2 million metric tons annually.”
“DDGS and its value in all types of animal rations shows that US grain producers have the capacity and the capability to produce for both food and fuel.” Hobbie said. He noted that if the four million tons of DDGS exported from the US this year were divided equally between all the major livestock food sectors it would produce 331,000 metric tons of chicken, nearly five billion eggs, almost 86,000 metric tons of beef, 1.8 million metric tons of milk and 205,000 metric tons of pork.
Listen to Hobbie’s remarks here, provided by Hoosier Ag Today:
