The U.S. Grains Council recently announced new grain import records
set by Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.
2015 and 2016
marketing data were recently released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA).
The four nations, members of the
Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), were able to utilize the trade
agreement between the U.S. and other members to increase their grain imports. By 2020, most tariffs on U.S. agricultural products will be eliminated for CAFTA-DR
members.
Guatemala broke its 2014-2015 corn import record by 3.6 percent.
More than 880,000 metric tons went to Guatemala in the 2015-2016 marketing
year.
El Salvador also increased its corn imports. It imported
more than 650,000 metric tons of U.S. corn, a 22 percent increase over the
previous year. El Salvador also increased imports of distiller's dried grains
with solubles (DDGS) by 34 percent over the previous record, set in 2010-2011.
Additionally, Honduras set new records in imports of corn and DDGS.
Corn imports were up by 24 percent, at 549,000 metric tons, while DDGS
increased to 43,000 metric tons.
Imports of U.S. corn to Nicaragua saw record increases two
years in a row. The latest record is 258,000 metric tons, a rise of 35 percent
over the previous year's record 191,000 metric tons.
Latin American nations set import records for U.S. corn
