By Cary B. Sifferath, USGC Regional Director in the Mediterranean and Africa

Dry conditions this winter and spring have reduced Spain’s domestic grains production, and Spanish feed millers report that that Spain may need to boost imports by at least 3 million metric tons above its typical level of around 10 million tons. This is an estimate for all grains including milling wheat, feed wheat, barley, sorghum, and corn. Spanish feeders expressed interest especially in U.S. new crop sorghum, having assessed that old crop supplies remain excessively tight.

We are talking to potential buyers now and we will be holding our EU-27 Sorghum and DDGS Promotion Program in early July in Spain. That will allow us to reach the buyers before they disappear on summer holiday, and to market U.S. new crop sorghum with our projected harvest acres and crop projections.

Also, strong interest in U.S. DDGS, provided that the MIR 162 issue can be resolved. Nutreco [Spain’s largest feed company] has historically preferred U.S. DDGS, but it has recently substituted DDGS from bioethanol plants in Spain, France and the Netherlands. This is an 8-9,000 ton per month buyer that we can win back, once MIR 162 is approved in the EU.

Lack of European approval of the MIR 162 event is inhibiting importation of most U.S. and Brazilian corn, U.S. DDGS, and new crop Argentine corn. This along with increasing protein meal prices in Europe have prompted the European feed and grain trade industry to ask for a more rapid approval process for biotech feed ingredients, as to allow full acess of all feed grains and protein meals from all sources available to the EU feed and livestock sector.