US FARMERS finishing their harvests are facing a big problem - where to put the mountain of grain they cannot sell to Chinese buyers, Reuters reports
US FARMERS finishing their harvests are facing a big problem - where to put the mountain of grain they cannot sell to Chinese buyers, Reuters reports. Louisiana farmer Richard Fontenot was compelled to let his crop rot and plow under 1,000 of his 1,700 soybean acres this fall, chopping plants into the dirt instead of harvesting more than $300,000 worth of beans.
Granted his beans were damaged by bad weather, made worse by a wet harvest. Nonethess, he could sell them anyway to a local elevator - giant silos usually run by international grains merchants.
In Louisiana, up to 15 per cent of the oilseed crop was plowed under or was too damaged to market, according to data analysed by Louisiana State University staff.
Crops are going to waste in parts of Mississippi and Arkansas. Grain piles, dusted by snow, sit on the ground in North and South Dakota. And in Illinois and Indiana, some farmers are struggling to protect silo bags stuffed with crops from animals.
US farmers planted 89.1 million acres of soybeans this year, the second most ever, expecting China's rising demand to give them better returns than other bulk crops.
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