News

Record number of bushels moving to export

The U.S. is scheduled to export a record amount of grain this year.

Ken Eriksen with Informa Economics tells Brownfield the U.S. is expecting to export almost five and a half Billion bushels of grain by the end of this year.  “We’re set up to have to do about between 150-180 million bushels of exports a week for the rest of October, November, December, going into January.  The best we’ve ever done is 148 million in one week and that was a year ago.”

He says farmers need an infrastructure system that can deliver commodities from the field to ports to keep pace with growing exports.  “If we’re not going to keep investing in our system and we’re not investing high enough nor efficient enough, we’re going to have challenges to really be a competitive, long-term player in the market.”  He says, “The market wants us because we can produce, our farmers are second to nobody.”

Eriksen says the common denominator for the hundreds of international grain buyers in Detroit this week is a need for export consistency.

And he says while there is support in Congress for the Water Resources Development Act, which authorizes water resources development and infrastructure, it could be a tough battle to get it passed in the lame duck session.

Eriksen spoke with with Brownfield during the Export Exchange in Detroit, Michigan.

AUDIO: Interview with Ken Eriksen