North Carolina producers import record amounts of corn

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

According to the Reuters news agency, North Carolina poultry and livestock farms figured out the effects of the 2012 drought early and used their combined buying power to make a record purchase of Brazilian corn.

Reuters reported that Prestage Farms Inc., a turkey and hog producer, Murphy-Brown LLC, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods Inc., and Nash Johnson and Sons, a poultry company, began importing 750,000 metric tonnes of corn in September. The purchase is billed as the largest American grain import on record. The corn will be delivered to Wilmington Bulk LLC, a grain import and export facility in the port of the same name. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects that U.S. corn imports will hit a record of $1.9 million tonnes by Aug. 31, the end of the marketing year.

The United States is normally the world's largest exporter of corn, soybeans and wheat. The drought last year resulted in the smallest crop in six years. According to the Reuters report, corn from Brazil was five per cent cheaper than corn delivered from the American Midwest.

Putting this into perspective, the story says Prestage Farms' 170,000 sows and five million turkeys consume 50 million bushels or 1.27 million metric tonnes of corn a year. BF