Historic Corn Use
(Gross bushels in billions, not accounting for the 1/3 bushel returned to feed market)
Historic Feed Production
Historic Distillers Grains Exports
*Estimated
Farmers Producing Food, Feed, and Fuel
- Demand for corn and other grains have helped add value to the commodities produced by American farmers and provides them a better return from the market and not the government.
- In 2011, farmers produced the fourth-largest crop and the fifth-highest average yield on the books, producing more than 12.36 billion bushels of corn based on 146.7 bushels per acre. Further, the 2011 crop was produced on virtually the same amount of acres used in the mid-1970s to produce crops half the size.
- Experts from USDA, the World Bank, academia, and other nongovernmental organizations all note that a range of factors influence food prices including oil prices, commodity speculation, weather, and monetary policies. According to USDA, American farmers receive just 12.6 cents of every dollar spent on food.
- Gross demand for corn from ethanol production was 5 billion bushels, or 40% of the total supply. Importantly, ethanol producers supplied 39.4 million metric tons of livestock feed. When this is taken into account, the measure of ethanol's corn demand is 3.5 billion bushels– 26% of the total U.S. supply.
- The USDA report concluded that one metric ton of distillers grains displaced 1.2 metric tons of the traditional corn and soybean livestock feed ration. As a result, distillers grains and other ethanol feeds are making greater supplies of both corn and soybeans available for other uses.
- Over the past 20 years, the average corn yield has increased by 36%, from 109 bushels per acre in 1991 to an estimated 147 bushels per acre in 2011. Results from a study conducted by Informa Economics, Inc. projects the average corn yield to increase another 29% by 2020, to 189 bushels per acre.
- One-third of every bushel of grain that enters the ethanol process is enhanced and returned to the animal feed market, most often in the form of distillers grains, corn gluten feed, and corn gluten meal. These co-products are fed to beef cattle, dairy cows, swine, poultry, and fish in nations around the world. In the past decade, the annual volume of animal feed produced by the U.S. ethanol industry has grown by a factor of eight. In the 2010/11 marketing year, the U.S. ethanol industry generated 39.4 million metric tons (mmt) of high-quality feed, making the renewable fuels sector one of the larger feed processing segments in the United States. To put these production volumes in context, consider that the amount of feed produced by the ethanol industry is more than the total amount of feed produced by all of the beef cattle in the nation’s feedlots.
- Historically, only small volumes of U.S. distillers grains were exported. But in recent years, distillers grains exports have boomed, reflecting the surge in global demand for energy and protein feeds and the growing acceptance of co-products. In the span of 2 years, distiller grains exports have increased 70%, from 4.51 mmt in 2009 to 7.65 mmt in 2011, comprising nearly one-fifth of total distillers grains production. The U.S. ethanol industry shipped distillers grains to 47 countries in 2011, with over half of exports heading to Mexico, China, and Canada.
- Globally, U.S. ethanol production represents just a sliver of total grain demand. Using the same calculations, U.S. ethanol production utilizes just 3.2% of all grain supplies worldwide.
- Advances in ethanol production technologies are yielding additional co-products as well. According to RFA analysis, 40% of the nation’s ethanol biorefineries are capturing corn oil during the ethanol production process and selling that oil into the feed market, as well as biodiesel and other chemical markets. All told, U.S. ethanol producers supplied an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of corn oil in 2011.
