October 4, 2007

US corn farmers facing low grain storage

Corn growers in the United States are running up against a lack of grain elevators to store their record 13.3-billion-bushel crop. 

Grain elevators in central Illinois are at almost near storage capacity, with grain merchandisers working furiously to ship grain or find a place to put it, industry officials said.

The Illinois corn crop, yielding 180 bushels an acre, is on track to turn out a record-tying 2.34 billion bushels this year, officials said.

According to Donald Ludwig, manager of Elkhart Grain Co., the US will have more in temporary space this year than in the past.

The company handled three times as much corn in September as in the same month last year, he added.

He said he expected to store 500,000 more bushels of corn this year than in 2006.

The storage problem is exacerbated by a harvest going twice as fast as usual, due to weeks of little or no rain to slow down the rush to the elevators, analysts said.

Increased ethanol production has heightened demand for corn, prompting many farmers to decrease soy acres for corn this spring. A favourable growing season this summer then boosted yields.