The U.S. Grains Council recently held its Board of Delegates meeting in Sacramento, California. Ryan LeGrand, president and CEO of USGC, says he and their staff have spent a lot of time traveling abroad to promote U.S. grains. He talks about what the Council is doing to increase grain consumption in Mexico, one of the biggest trading partners for the U.S. “Mexico's livestock industry continues to grow. They're setting records for meat and pork exports every year. They need to feed that beef and that pork, and that comes primarily from us. They have enjoyed timely shipments and affordable shipments of our grains, we’re neighbors, they can run just-in-time inventory down there, and, as I said, they continue to grow. They're going to set a record for their distiller’s grains imports. They're going to import over 2.1 million tons of distillers grains this year. It'll be the highest number that they've ever imported.”
He says the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement brought the North American Free Trade Agreement into the modern era. “NAFTA was a 1994 agreement, USMCA is a 2019 agreement, so it's brought it up to speed with the times. There are new chapters in there on digital trade that wasn't around in 1994, on biotechnology, and there's a quick dispute resolution system within it. It wasn't ever going to bring a doubling of the corn exports or a doubling of the DDGs exports. That was never in the cards with USMCA. What we have now is an updated agreement that works for everyone.” The USGC is getting out to the rest of the world and promoting more opportunities for U.S. grain exports. He says the demand is there. “We've been getting back out on the road. I've been hitting the road a great deal recently with our officers and with our chairman. We've made some trips to North Africa, Spain, Dubai, Japan, and the list goes on. So, we've been very, very active as the world has started to open back up. It's been fantastic to get in front of those customers again, to meet with those government officials again, face to face.”