By Shane Frederick, SSGA Communications Manager

The 2020 U.S. Soy Global Trade Exchange & Specialty Grains Conference wrapped up on Thursday after four days of bringing together U.S. growers, processors and exporters with international buyers on a virtual platform.

In all, more than 1,500 attendees from 61 countries were registered for the GTE, which was co-hosted by the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and the Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance (SSGA). Going into the final evening sessions, more than 1,000 unique participants were counted. However, more were expected Thursday night as well as over the next month, as the GTE platform remains open to registrants with its features available on-demand for the next 30 days.

“We promised that we’d deliver the next best thing to being together in one geographical location by creating a unique online space for us all to gather virtually,” SSGA Executive Director Eric Wenberg said in his closing comments. “I believe we did that, and I hope you thought so, too.”

Wenberg and SSGA Chair Curt Petrich participated in a media panel, along with USSEC CEO Jim Sutter and USSEC Chair Monte Peterson, on U.S. Soy resiliency in which they discussed the virtual GTE, as well as the state of the industry during COVID-19, which has actually seen rising global demand for U.S. Soy.

“In the food sector, when we talk about soy, that’s a core ingredient in daily diets,” Petrich said, citing increased interest in natto beans from Japanese customers as an example. “What we have seen is an increase in demand … and an increase in interest in the 2020 crop. There’s been a good, solid, strong demand within the current situation.”

Paralympic dreams

The day began with an inspirational session, as Kevan Hueftle, a Nebraska rancher and farmer, told his story of overcoming adversity to compete as a sprinter on the international stage. In 2019, Hueftle, a below-the-knee amputee, won gold and silver medals at the Para-Pan Am Games in Peru and also competed in the Para-Athletics World Championships in Dubai.

Hueftle, who lost his foot in a 2005 hunting accident and, later, began competitive running while recovering from alcoholism, was set to compete in the U.S. Paralympic Trials this year, but the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19.

“I just like to compete,” Hueftle, 35, said. “If you line me up with somebody on the track and we’re even close to each other, I’ll beat you to the finish line. That’s how I view life, anyway. I might not be the fastest or the biggest or anything like that, but I’m not going to be outworked. That’s not going to happen.”

Hueftle will go for gold next year. If he indeed makes it to Tokyo, he will be competing around the same time as next year’s GTE!

Food soya outlook

The third of SSGA’s three breakout sessions took place on Thursday with a food soya exporter outlook. Wenberg moderated a panel that included representatives from four soy-producing regions of the United States. The group included Travis Meyer of Brushvale Seed (Minnesota, North Dakota), Adam Buckentine of The Redwood Group (Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri), Steve Herr of Star of the West (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana) and Tom Taliaferro of Montague Farms (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina).

The group reported on crop conditions in their respective areas and also discussed the current state of transportation and shipping logistics.

“The quality of the crop looks very, very good,” said Herr, who also noted that Star of the West is celebrating its 150^th year of business. “Overall, crops throughout the Midwest look very, very good. Compared to 2019, it’s in very good shape. Growers are looking forward to seeing how the crop continues to mature as we get to harvest time.”

All noted growing interest and opportunities for identity-preserved (IP) soybeans going forward.

“Planning and communication will be the key to success,” said Buckentine, who is a member of SSGA’s Board of Directors.

Wrapping up

Thursday’s other sessions included a USSEC breakout on U.S. Soy oil and general sessions featuring U.S. Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator Gregg Doud, who shared his perspective on the current state of U.S. trade policies, including the Phase One agreement with China, and ConsiliAgra’s Emily French, who gave a market outlook and shared strategies to position for the 2021 marketing year.

Go to the GTE website to learn more and to see the full agenda. Use the hashtag #USSOYexchange on social media to find out more information.

By Dale Hildebrant for Farm & Ranch Guide

With a growing acreage of pulses, dry edible beans and food-grade soybeans, the gentle handling of those crops is a growing concern for the farmers who raise them and the businesses that handle them. This is different from the way grain handling has traditionally been viewed – get the job done as soon as possible and don’t give a lot of thought to how the grain or seeds are handled. However, this can prove to be a costly error.

“The commodity we started to look at as far as gentle handling was dry edible beans,” said Ken Hellevang, Extension ag engineer specializing in grain handling. “We did some research looking at handling beans and a lot of the things we found there would apply to other situations as well.

“Wheat has been pretty tolerant of whatever we did. Corn is a little more fragile, but still pretty durable. When we look at soybeans, though, that is more of a balancing act and for anything food-grade, we are wanting to drastically reduce the amount of breakage,” he added.

All grains become more fragile to handle at lower moisture contents, including cereals, Hellevang noted.

“It has always been a trade-off, even with corn, that when you look at multiple handlings of the crop, as the moisture decreases you get more breakage.”

For instance, he said once the moisture level of soybeans drops below 11 percent, the breakage increases significantly. Beans, such as pintos, can safely be stored over winter at a 16 percent moisture level, but if that storage period gets extended into the summer months, it’s necessary to bring that moisture level down to a 10 percent level.

“What I typically recommend is once temperatures in the spring warm to 40 degrees, which means around 55 degrees during the day and dropping down to freezing at night, we use the aeration fans to dry down the grain further,” he said. “Usually the relative humidity in May is fairly dry and just running the aeration fan is all that will be required.”

Those lower moisture levels require care in transporting the commodities.

Temperature

Seed damage based on temperature was also studied in detail with dry edible beans, according to Hellevang. When the beans got below freezing, processors were reporting huge losses from increased damage to the beans.

“We found that when the temperature dropped from 75 degrees to 55 degrees, we saw an increase in the breakage potential – so the colder the grain is, the more likely we are going to have breakage,” he said. “The years when we are out there handling frozen grain, we are likely to see increased damage as opposed to if that crop was 50 or 60 degrees.

“Ideally, if we were planning to handle that grain, it might be better to warm the grain a little bit, bring it back to 40 or so degrees, rather than leaving it at 20 degrees to minimize the potential for breakage during handling,” he added.

Hellevang explained two different ways this could be accomplished. First is turning on the heat in the bin for a day or two to bring the temperature up, while the other is not cooling the grain so much to start with.

“We used to recommend bringing the grain temperature to just below freezing if it was going to be held over the winter months, but there are some now advocating for the temperature to not be brought below freezing, but rather only in that 35 to 40 degree range,” he said. “If there is an expectation we are going to market that grain during the winter, we might leave the grain temperature in that 35-40 degree range would be the best goal, rather than bringing it down below freezing.”

Moving grain

Most of the grain conveyor manufactures now have tube or belt conveyor systems that don’t have the abrasiveness of augers.

“The primary point where we see damage occurring is on augers that are running partially full and at full speed, or where the flighting is worn and you have a lot of pinch points,” Hellevang explained. “If you have a new auger and you are running it full, probably the amount of damage you experience is acceptable.

Falling grain

Seed damage can also occur if you are dropping beans 40 or 50 feet onto a concrete bin floor. That damage will continue to occur as a cushion of grain develops, although to a lesser degree, Hellevang said.

To minimize this damage, a piece of equipment called a “bean ladder” is used. This zig-zags the flow of grain and slows it down to lessen the impact of the fall.

Finally, Hellevang stressed grain storage time is based on whole, sound kernels, and if the kernel breaks, that exposes the carbohydrates and starch inside the kernel and makes it more susceptible to spoilage. The more broken kernels and cracked kernels the more potential there will be for mold growth and spoilage of grain in the storage facility.

“The less mechanical damage we can do the better it is going to be,” he said.

The DeLong Company is no stranger to helping build up an industry. With more than a century of success, it’s safe to say the family business understands the importance of reliable products, services and well-timed information.

To do those three things well, The DeLong Company is actively engaged with industry leaders, buyers and other ag organizations. Sometimes that means providing speakers at regional outreach events, promoting U.S. identity-preserved (IP) soy and grains or networking with global buyers. Among all those activities, DeLong has been a big supporter in the growth of the U.S. SOY Global Trade Exchange & Specialty Grains Conference, hosted each year by the U.S. Soybean Export Council and Specialty Soya and Grains Alliance (formerly Midwest Shippers Association).

“USSEC and Midwest Shippers, now SSGA, do a great job bringing in groups from throughout the world for U.S. companies to meet and network with,” says Austin DeLong, who heads non-GMO soybean export sales for the company.

The DeLong Company has been a Gold Sponsor of the conference since the two groups started the joint conference in 2013 in Davenport, Iowa. DeLong says bringing together suppliers and buyers from the U.S. and abroad can be a more meaningful way to build business relationships.

“There is only so much you can do via a phone call or emails,” he says. “The conference brings a lot of people together in one location.”

He’s quick to point out that the conference isn’t just for exporters, but has something for everyone in the industry, from testing equipment, to logistics, to farmer producers and agriculture organizations.

“The locations have worked well the past few years as well,” DeLong says. “We’ve been able to bring trade teams visiting the conference to our facilities to show them firsthand our operations.”

SSGA Executive Director Eric Wenberg gives kudos to The DeLong Company’s commitment to the U.S. IP soya and grains industry.

“To have an industry leader step up year after year to support the conference, along with USSEC and SSGA, is amazing,” Wenberg says. “Commitment from the top has a way of trickling down and inspiring, and The DeLong Company’s commitment to the GTE and the industry does just that.”

DeLong says he takes a lot of pride knowing his family’s business, which spans more than 100 years, connects well globally.

“Often times when chatting with customers, it is interesting to find out so many are also family businesses, and that connection is pretty special.”

By Bruce Abbe

Major weather problems continue to have an extended impact on bulk grain shipping. To add insult to injury, major trade war escalation last week has created even more uncertainty for both bulk and containerized grain transportation from the U.S.

River Shipping
Flooding on the Mississippi River and its main shipping tributaries continues to hold back grain barge shipping on the inland waterways system, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The 2,350-mile Mississippi moves millions of tons of grain down river to export markets each year, and brings fertilizer and other inputs up river.

Flooding and high water have shut down the river in places, keeping the barges from moving to the Louisiana exporter bulk loading terminals. While a number of the locks that closed in March due to flooding have reopened, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t expect the river to be fully open until possibly June. 

Even if the locks were open, “many of these barges wouldn’t be able to get here anyway,” Sam Heilig, a Corps spokeswoman at Rock Island, Illinois told AP. “Because the water’s so high, there’s not enough clearance to get under some of the bridges.”

USDA’s Grain Transportation Report (GTR) last week said year-to-date grain movement on the Mississippi, Ohio and Arkansas rivers has fallen below recent years. Barge tonnages through those three locking rivers were down 32 percent from the three-year average and 24 percent below last year.

The flood challenges have moved further down river enabling some upper river locks to reopen. But the system is a far cry from its normal continuous barge traffic from Minneapolis to the Gulf by mid-May.

Rails
USDA’s GTR reported that the Class 1 railroads are reporting higher rated in the “secondary market” auctions for guaranteed delivery of rail cars. Lack of grain movement by barge is shifting some traffic to rail.

Nevertheless, the U.S.-China trade war, coupled with a serious Asian Swine Flu epidemic leading to liquidation of swine herds, has also put a damper on grain shipments for export.

Bulk ocean rates
On a positive note, dry bulk ocean freight rates reported by USDA remain low for bulk commodities, including grain.

Container shipping
International intermodal container shipping, however, has and will feel the impact of the U.S.-China trade war. Last week, the Trump administration concluded the Chinese side had backed away from demands it reportedly had agreed to in negotiations, resulting in new tariffs. The nearly year-long trade war has led to huge imbalances of equipment.

In late fall, the threat of the 10 percent tariff on many Chinese manufacturing products mainly originally set for Dec. 31 led to a major surge in imports due to “front-loading” of shipments. That deadline was moved to March, and the surge continued with extra load ships chartered, in addition to regular container ship strings calling on west coast ports.

Meanwhile exports dropped off the cliff. Last year, U.S. containerized exports to China dropped 24 percent compared to 2017, according to the Journal of Commerce.

The surge created huge congestion issues at the ports for storing containers, access to trucking chassis for moving containers, and rail service and equipment handling at inland rail terminals for imports.

The problems were most acute at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, the largest in the U.S., which handles one-third of U.S. import traffic.

Last week, Gene Seroka, Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles, sounded sharp criticism of current truck handling systems at the ports. Seroka called for reforms to improved port fluidity, including adoption of the port-wide trucker appointment system and relocation of chassis storage to near-dock sites to be prepared for an expected return to high demand and congestion in the weeks and months ahead.

Near-term heavy inbound traffic will be coming with imports of consumer products for retailers for the school year starting late August into early fall. The normal peak season for product imports for the Holiday season is late fall. Despite higher tariffs on Chinese goods, the time frame is too narrow for manufacturing of those goods to shift to other countries quickly.

The U.S.-China trade war is a significant issue for all port container terminals, Seroka told JOC. China is the largest trading partner with the LA/LB ports.

The ‘huge equipment imbalance’ caused by import surges coming from front-loading shipments, combined with the simultaneous drop in exports (read: ag exports) has disrupted normal flows of equipment eastbound and westbound.

“We cannot (afford to) underestimate the impact the trade war is having,” Seroka said. Seroka has spoken at past Midwest Shippers Association conferences and has been a strong supporter of MSA’s – now the Specialty Soya and Grain Alliance  – efforts to expand intermodal rail service from the Upper Midwest to Southern California.

Click here for further JOC coverage on how the sudden escalation of trade tensions between the U.S. and China last week, after a deal reportedly was near, “casts a shadow on trans-Pacific containerized supply chains, elevating risk for ocean carriers.”

Bruce Abbe is senior director of specialty grains, products and transportation for SSGA. Reach Bruce at 952-253-6231 or drop him a line here.