Chad Smith, NAFB News Service

The USDA says Chinese buyers purchased 686,000 metric tons of U.S. corn last week. Over 370,000 tons will be delivered in the 2019-2020 marketing year, with the rest going overseas in 2020-2021. This seems to suggest that China is following through on its obligations in the Phase One trade deal. In a statement to Agri-Pulse last week, the U.S. Grains Council says, “China’s recent purchases of U.S. corn place the country back in the top five markets for U.S. corn, which is promising news for American farmers during this critical time. China has been a strong customer for U.S. corn, sorghum, DDGs, and ethanol in past years.” USGC is hopeful that Chinese customers will continue finding a lot of value in U.S. coarse grains and related products in the years to come. The purchase of 315,000 tons announced last Thursday was especially large, almost triple the export sales for 2020-2021 corn in the entire week of April 24-30. That was 97,500 tons to buyers mostly located in Japan and Panama. Bryan Lohmar is the China Director for the USGC. He says, “We’ve already seen exports greater than the past few years, and China typically buys the most corn during summer months when its own supplies get tighter and domestic prices firm up.” China’s corn-buying began back in March with a purchase of 756,000 tons, reported on the same day the Asian nation bought 340,000 tons of U.S. wheat.