More distillers grains from US plants

An increased supply of distillers’ grains (DDGS) from biofuel production in the United States seems likely in 2010, with projections that the U.S. plants will boost their corn-based production of ethanol to around 45 billion liters from the 41 billion liters they produced in 2009. Their use of corn is projected to rise by at least 1% to almost 117 million metric tons, compared with about 140 million tons used for livestock feed.
The total 2010 crop is forecast at approximately 334 million tons as U.S. growers increase their corn acreage by an expected 3%. U.S. exports of DDGS for animal feed usage in 2009 represented 18% of the 30.5 million metric tons produced nationally. The largest export markets for the distillers’ grains were Mexico (taking 1.5 million tons), Canada (804,000 tons) and China (542,000 tons).