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WASHINGTON – U.S. corn exported early this marketing year was better than U.S. No. 2 grade on all factors, according to the U.S. Grains Council..
The U.S. Grains Council recently released its 2013-2014 Corn Export Cargo Quality Report. This is the third annual report, and Council Vice President Erick Erickson says it tracks the changes in quality from harvest to export.
“The general message this year is that we have another good quality corn crop,” Erickson says. “Actually the previous year’s corn crop was a little better, but this is very similar to the quality in 2011, which was a good crop. We see a little higher moisture levels, a little higher level of BCFM, and stress cracks, which reflect the wetter harvest and the fact that it’s going to break up a little more because it had to be dried.”
At 14.5%, average moisture content on this year’s corn crop was higher than the previous two years. The average test weight was 57.3 pounds per bushel, which on the whole indicates good quality. Erickson says the reports for all 3 years have shown low incidence of aflatoxin in U.S. corn.
“This year, actually, has the lowest incidence of aflatoxin and DON (deoxynivalenol, also called vomitoxin), those are the two mycotoxins we test for. So in that respect, it’s also a very positive report.”
Erickson says USGC holds meetings in key markets across the world to bring foreign customers information from export quality reports, to inform them on what’s happening in the United States.
“Our customers are constantly asking us for information about what’s happening in the marketplace,” says Erickson. “[Questions like] ‘What’s happening to the U.S. crop?’, ‘How does it look?’ And you get anecdotes, you know, you get certain types of stories, and those are useful. ‘That’s what I’ve seen on this crop tour,’ or whatever. But we decided we needed a very objective and statistically valid sampling of the corn crop, early in the marketing stream right there at the local elevators, and then at export.”
