The U.S. Grains & BioProducts Council’s (USGBC’s) Sustainable Corn Exports (SCE) platform, developed to operationalize the Corn Sustainability Assurance Protocol (CSAP), saw promising expansion in 2025, with the issuance of Records of Sustainability for the first-ever shipment of corn fermented protein (CFP) container to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for millions of tons of exports to Japan and 34 other nations.
The CSAP is a farmer-led initiative developed to show the strong institutional sustainability foundations underpinning U.S. agriculture, as well as the traditional and innovative practices that U.S. corn producers are adopting daily.
In May, the Council’s regional office for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) celebrated the inaugural shipment of CFP to the UAE covered by ROS assurances, a result of a commercial partnership struck during Export Exchange 2024 and a 2024/2025 Corn Harvest Quality Report rollout event in Istanbul, Turkey in January 2025.
“This milestone reflects the success of the Council’s efforts to build relationships and facilitate deals that advance sustainable agriculture,” said Ramy H. Taieb, USGBC regional director for EMEA.
“Having the shipment covered under the SCE platform provides buyers with assurances that the corn used in CFP production met strict environmental, social and economic sustainability standards.”
In June, USGBC Director in Japan Tommy Hamamoto and USGBC Director of Global Sustainability Carlos Suárez led a group of Japanese corn millers to visit the U.S. corn value chain in Kentucky, with a focus on new and young buyers to introduce them to the quality, availability and leading conservation practices that underpin U.S. corn production. Participants learned about the CSAP, SCE and other tools available for buyers to receive assurances of the rigorous standards U.S. corn products are grown with.
The team visited an array of farms working under a corn, wheat and soy rotation, where buyers were able to appreciate advanced resource-saving farming technologies and conservation practices.
Other stops included deep dives into other applications for feed grains, like distilling, to give buyers a wider range of knowledge of U.S. corn’s quality and safety. The delegation also met with a conservation group to discuss the latest tools and technologies farmers have at their disposal to increase yields and reduce input costs like water.
“Mature markets around the world have a serious interest in their goods being produced in an environmentally conscious way, and showcasing the leading conservation practices implemented by growers such as those we met in Kentucky prove U.S. corn’s reliability at a relatively low impact for the global marketplace,” Suárez said.
“Since launching in 2023, CSAP and the SCE have covered over 45 million tons of U.S. corn products shipped to international markets, showcasing growers’ stewardship pf the land and providing customers with assurances, in Japan and elsewhere, that U.S. corn allows them to comply with their ingredient sourcing policies and achieve goals across multiple industries.”