Non feed corn

[rain]

Charlie do you have any idea how much corn comes into canada that is not used for feed?

[charliep]

No idea on the human food/distilling front other than not very much.

On the feed front, the combined provincial imports (I put BC, AB and SK together because of the issue of imports being recorded at point of border crossing versus consumption) of US corn have ranged from 100,000 to 150,000 t prior to the last 2 calendar years. Some will be human food, distilling and grain for high energy rations (poultry). This increased to about 500,000 t in calendar 2001 and 1.3 MMT in calendar 2002.

Manitoba US corn imports have ranged from 150,000 to 250,000 historically with the last 2 calendar years at 285,000 t and 950,000 t respectively (my guess is some of the 2002 imports made their way into AB).

[rain]

AAFC has 4.3 MMT for the 2002-03 crop year for total corn imports. Would you say that 90% is for feed. Your numbers don't ad to AAFC, or am I looking at the wrong years.

[charliep]

No exact percent for feed but would suspect closer to 99 %. The numbers don't agree because AAFC is for crop year versus my calendar year and includes eastern Canada. Ontario and Quebec regularly import US corn.

[rain]

so you figure only about 2.2 MMT of corn used AB, Sask, and Manitoba? do you have BC figured in here?

[charliep]

Yes.

I found the statcan historical S&D tables (5 year) and they show the following.

Ontario imports of US corn have varied from 300,000 t to 1.8 MMT with the higher values in the last two crops years. Ontario had imported 631,000 to the end of March.

Quebec US corn imports have ranged from 200,000 t to 650,000 t with 134,000 imported to the end of March.

Prairie US corn imports have ranged from 370,000 to to 2.1 MMT with the latter occuring in 2001/02. US corn imports to the end of March have been 1.55 MMT.

Bringing to an all Canada base, normal corn imports are close to 900,000 t with 3.8 MMT in 2001/02 and 2.3 MMT to the end of March this year. Using AAFC numbers, Canada would import a further 1 MMT over the last 4 months of the crop.