A delegation led by Malaysia’s Minister of Agriculture Dato Sri Ahd Shabery Bin Cheek recently traveled to the U.S. Midwest and Pacific Northwest to become better acquainted with the corn supply chain and understand how a bushel of grain moves from the field to feed mill.

“Currently, Malaysia adopts single source corn origination, which can be very problematic in the event of supply shocks and other market disruptions,” said USGC Regional Director for South and Southeast Asia Kevin Roepke, who is based in Kuala Lumpur.

“From a food security standpoint, the Council wanted to promote a multi-hemispheric approach to corn imports to insulate Malaysians from price spikes.”

Malaysia has among the highest per capita consumptions of poultry meat in the world and imports nearly all of the corn used to produce compound feed. As an open and free trader, Malaysia also enjoys one of the highest food security indexes in the developing world and the highest in the regional organization ASEAN after Singapore.

While in the United States, the minister and his team were special dignitaries at the World Food Prize events in Iowa. In addition, the team got to learn firsthand about the benefits of modern transgenic technology, as well as some new and innovative technologies in plant breeding like CRISPR-Cas9 and gene editing. The team also explored corn harvest and learned how corn is collected in rural elevators, loaded onto barges and ultimately shipped out around the world via grain export terminals.

Roepke said that as a result of the tour, he expected the United States will have a better opportunity at sourcing some of Malaysia’s 3 – 3.5 million metric ton (118 – 138 million bushel) corn import market.

“Minister Shabery was very impressed with the United States’ meticulous attention to quality control, scale and ‘just-in-time’ capability to move corn into the world market in only a matter of days, at a moment’s notice,” he said.

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