May 29, 2012

Japan's corn ratio in animal feed down 44.3% in March

As local feed makers kept restricting the usage of costly corn, the ratio of corn in Japan's livestock feed production fell to 44.3% in March, the lowest in the past two decades, a Ministry of Agriculture official said on Monday (May 28).

Japan, which produces almost no corn for feed use of its own, is the world's No. one importer of the crop. The US, the world's biggest corn exporter, is traditionally the major supplier of the main ingredient in livestock feed in the country.

But Japan's feed makers have started to replace a part of corn with wheat since 2010 to react to a rally in US corn prices to record highs, as there are more sources for wheat.

The ratio of wheat in feed production rose to 2.7% in March, also the highest at least in the past two decades, after the ratio reached 2% in November.

Overall compound feed shipments rose to 2.16 million tonnes in March, up 1.6% from a year earlier, when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the following nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station 240 kilometres north of Tokyo, affected farmers in the region.