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(Jamie) Welcome to Farm Factor! First Kyle and Don Bloss, Chairman of the National Sorghum Producers, discuss projections for the 2017 sorghum crop.
(Kyle Bauer) Hi, this is Kyle Bauer; I have Don Bloss with the National Sorghum Producers. Don, sorghum in Kansas is a big deal. Not a lot around the nation, but out on the plains it’s a huge deal. We always have to get it sold and there’s good news when it comes to that. (Don Bloss) Yes, we got a very good year this past year, 55% of the sorghum that we raised last year went to foreign countries, China being our largest customer, of course. Looking in 2017, we’re ahead of projections. So far this year, for 2017, we’ve sold 71 million bushel. One week of that is about 16 million bushel and one week was 13 million bushel. We’ve had some very good sales. (Kyle) Where is that going around the world? China a few years ago was a huge buyer. Africa, I know. But where is the hot market right now on exports? (Don) China, of course, still is the hot market. They bought 55% of our sorghum that was produced last year that was sold last year, Mexico comes in second and then we have Japan. We’ve expanded our markets, we’ve been pretty fortunate on that, we used to sell to about six nations, right now we’re up to 11 nations which is double the number of countries. We’re feeling good about that, we continue to expand the number of countries and our foreign business has just been great. (Kyle) When foreign countries are looking at sorghum, what attracts them to that grain? (Don) It’s a good grain for feed, it’s non-GMO and that’s a big-ticket item for several countries. Production that we’ve had has been very good production, it’s good stable grain; by the time it gets there it’s in good shape. We’ve done an excellent job of handling the grain, harvesting and handling the grain and they’re impressed with it and we’re not going to argue with them. (Kyle) In the United States it would mainly be used as a feed grain or for ethanol, what about the importing countries? (Don) I think most of that probably goes for grain for feed, China especially. I’m sure about all of those is going to go for grain for feed. (Kyle) When you’re talking about a million bushel, you’re talking about more or less three unit trains. When you’re talking about 17 million bushel, I believe you said in one week or 16 million bushel, it’s a lot of unit trains? (Don) Yes, that’s right. So far we’ve had transportation that’s available and we’re able to make the connections so it’s not a bigger ticket item as far as getting it to the places where it needs to go. (Kyle) We’re visiting with Don Bloss and he is with the National Sorghum Producers, this is Kyle Bauer reporting.
(Jamie) Folks come back after these messages for this week’s Kansas Soybean Update.