The results are in, and the U.S. Grains Council’s new-for-2012 Corn Harvest Quality and Corn Export Quality reports are proving a major success with international buyers. The reports can be found online at www.grains.org

From Tunis to Taipei and all points in between, the Council’s country directors report that buyers and other interested parties have been uniformly complimentary about the transparency and comprehensiveness of the reports. Buyers in every country in which the reports have been presented have reacted favorably, clearly indicating that the reports have answered an unmet need.

“We’re setting a new standard,” said Alvaro Cordero, USGC manager international operations who presented the Harvest Quality report in Colombia and Panama. “Competition is tough and getting tougher, with countries like Argentina and Brazil ramping up for export. Good information is a powerful marketing tool.”

New this year, the Corn Harvest Quality Report samples U.S. grain in major exporting areas as it comes off the farm. The follow-on Export Quality Report samples corn as it is loaded onboard ship. The reports provide detailed data on test weight, broken corn and foreign material (BCFM), heat damage, total damage, moisture content, chemical composition (starch, protein, and oil content), mycotoxins, and a variety of other physical factors of interest to buyers.

“Based on a clear and transparent methodology, the 2012 reports demonstrated that U.S. corn entering export channels this year is of uniformly high quality,” said Wendell Shauman, USGC chairman. “The value of the reports to buyers is expected to grow over time, as future years combine to form a long-term database illustrating the trends and variation to be expected in U.S. source corn.”