Annual report: U.S. Grains Council promotes ethanol, DDGS in 2015

Source: By Ann Bailey, Ethanol Producer Magazine • Posted: Monday, April 4, 2016

The U.S. Grain’s Council intensified its promotion of ethanol and sought increased markets for distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) in 2015, according to the organization’s 2015 annual report.

The council partners with Growth Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association and USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service to promote U.S. ethanol as a clean-burning fuel source for buyers and other users across the globe, the report said.

Activities in 2015 included bringing buying teams from the Philippines, Mexico and Peru to the United States, sending two U.S. ethanol industry groups overseas and holding a series of workshops focusing on the environmental and economic benefits of ethanol use in China, the report said. A U.S. exporter confirmed sales of 10 million gallons of U.S. ethanol valued at more than $15 million after a trade team’s mission, evidence that the council’s promotion program is working, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Feed Grain Council’s staff and consultants initiated two independent aqua feeding DDGS trials in Vietnam. The historic trial studied the effects of a variety of DDGS inclusion rates on feed conversion ratios and color of fish filets as a way to inform for Vietnamese catfish farmers about U.S. DDGS as a high-value feed ingredient, the council said.

The council also conducted new feeding trials in Canada in 2015 as a way to develop and expand opportunities for DDGS in that country. Trial results will help show that DDSS can be used at higher rates than previously thought relative to Canadian grains competing grains. The results will help to continue to increase exports to Canada, the report said.

Outside of North America, in 2015, the U.S. Grains Council promoted DDGS in the Middle East and North Africa by bringing members to participate in consultations with Saudi Arabian grain buyers. A longtime council consultant in Morocco who is a poultry scientist also traveled within that region to meet with poultry producers and local feed managers and talk to them about how DDGS can lower costs while maintaining or improving livestock’s nutritional offerings.

|