Corn Commentary

U.S. Corn Grower in China

National Corn Growers Association board member Guy Davenport of North Carolina has been taking part in the U.S. Grains Council’s Annual China Corn Tour this month which has already visited Northern China Plain regions of Henan, Anhui, Hebei and Shandong Provinces and is now touring the drought stricken Northeast region of China.

During a conference call from China this morning, Guy talked about what they have been seeing. “China corn farming was certainly not what I envisioned it to be,” Guy said. “They have soils that are just as good as ours, very large fields that are very comparable to our Midwest farms.” Guy says they found most farmers had just about five acres, but they were small holdings all close together, giving the impression of vast acreage for miles. They also found out that harvest is done by hand and takes a typical farmer about ten days.

As a representative for all corn growers, Guy will be reporting back to the NCGA board what he has learned in China. “I think this gives us a better perspective about how much corn can be grown in that part of the world, how efficient they are in their corn production and to what extent they use irrigation. It was truly an eye-opening experience to me.’

Cary Sifferath, USGC Senior Director in China, talked about the drought conditions in the country and high corn prices. “Those high prices have led to some opportunities for US feed grains products, specifically distillers dried grains (DDGS) products from the US ethanol industry,” Cary said. “We had roughly 8,000 metric tons of DDGS that was exported from the US into China and right now for 2009 we can easily predict 250,000 to 300,000 tons of distillers dried grains being imported by China’s feed and livestock industry, especially in the southern and coastal areas of China where DDGS has become a very competitive feed ingredient.”

Lots of photos from the tour are already posted on the USGC Flickr photo album here and commentary can be found on the USGC blog The Grain Board.

Listen to Guy Davenport’s remarks from China here: