Too much corn leading to lower profits for farmers

January 27, 2018 |

In Illinois, corn farmers are selling crops at a loss to makers of ethanol or animal feed because of excess supply of food-grade corn. Many farmers switched or added different strains of corn in order to diversify and get premium prices for nice products like white corn which can often be sold at a premium, but lower premium prices and four-year lows, are seeing the benefits of that diversification dwindling away.

Partially to blame is the increased worldwide supply of corn with record production in South Africa this year after several years of low production due to droughts. With South Africa once again producing abundant harvests of corn, there is more supply than demand so companies in the U.S. looking to buy white corn or other specialty niche types of corn are looking for lower prices. Another challenge could be that DowDuPont is estimated to have up to 90% market share in the global white corn seed market, making price fluctuations a bigger issue.

Category: Fuels

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