USGC President And CEO Talks 2023 Priorities With NAFB

As we close out the first month of 2023, Ryan LeGrand, U.S. Grains Council (USGC) president and CEO, sat down with the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) to look back at 2022, while discussing the organization’s priorities for this year.

“[With] 62 million tons of corn exported, distiller’s grains were very near a record high. You had Mexico taking a record amount of DDGS, well over 2 million tons, so a pretty good year all in all,” LeGrand said when reflecting on last year’s exports.

Looking ahead, the markets in Africa and Southeast Asia, along with Canada, look promising for U.S. exports.

“[In Africa,] we’re doing animal extension work, we’re teaching people better feed milling practices and hoping that we can create a market for ourselves in the future,” LeGrand said.

“Southeast Asia is really one that we’re always watching and working hard in. We have some issues with corn competitiveness in there, but distiller’s grains has always really been a big ticket item going into Southeast Asia. Ethanol is starting to expand a little bit in there. If you break it down by product, on the ethanol side, I’d say Canada is a very, very promising market. They’ve quickly turned into our top export market for ethanol.”

Outside those markets, LeGrand hopes to increase opportunity in more established markets.

“We’re looking to expand ethanol use in Japan. There was just zero ethanol going into that [market] just a few short years ago, and we keep expanding our reach there and expanding exports there of ethanol to Japan in the form of ETBE, so that’s one we’ll be watching.”

Listen to the full interview.