February 20, 2015
World trade in wheat will increase 16%, world trade in corn will increase by 18%, and world trade in soybeans will increase by 28% over the next decade according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). To meet this demand, an additional 50 million acres of the three crops – equivalent to the size of the state of Nebraska, or Ireland and Greece combined, will need to be sown and produced.
Despite reduced predictions for future Chinese corn purchases due to high domestic stocks, global coarse grain imports are forecast to climb by more than 30 million tons to 179 million tons by 2024/25. The USDA also expects global wheat imports to increase from a total of 45 million tons this season, to 180 million tons by 2024, and soybean and soybean product imports to climb by 49 million tons to 238 million tons within the same time period.
China’s yearly imports of dried distiller grains (DDGs), derived from corn, currently exceed import of corn itself, as barley and sorghum shipments are increasingly replacing corn shipments. The USDA predicts that within the next decade, sorghum and barley imports to China will exceed 11 million tons.
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