American farmers using genetically engineered corn, or GMO's, are finding it tough to sell their product to China. Farmers selling traditionally grown corn were doing a bumper crop business with China until a few years ago when many started planting genetically modified corn courtesy of Syngenta, a seed company.

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With GMO corn not approved by China, American farmers stand to lose billions of dollars of potential sales, according to analysts.

Corn being sold to China goes into feed for animals, mainly chickens and hogs. China has a lot of such animals and consistently drove up corn commodity prices, thereby benefitting Midwest American farmers over the last decade.

Corn becomes chicken and hog feed in China by undergoing a DDGS process. This means dried distillers gram with solubles and  created through the ethanol production cycle.

When US farmers started employing Syngenta engineered corn last year, however, Chinese officials stopped imports.

The Syngenta gene designed to fight off pests has not been approved by China. Chinese officials became alarmed when they saw boatloads of the product sent over from the Midwest. Officials ordered GMO corn from the US stopped last November.

This move completely wiped out the US corn export market to China by February.

Initially, US grain exporters said the situation was normal and China simply was protecting its internal grain market. Grain exporters considered the ban temporary because China previously had accepted more than USD$1.5 billion in DDGS products products in 2013.

Temporary seemingly has turned into permanent as Chinese officials banned all forms of DDGS last week causing the price of the gene to plunge on US markets. The US National Grain and Feed Association, NGFA, estimated the Chinese DDGS corn ban could cost American farmers and ethanol producers upwards of USD$3 billion moving forward.

NGFA officials said US corn was being replaced by more costly grains like barley from Australia. While China also is bringing in more American sorghum as chicken and hog feed, NGFA claims Chinese farmers are being hurt by higher prices for those types of animal feed.

The U.S. Grains Council has asked Rom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of agriculture, to intervene in the issue and ask China to resume importing GMO corn. However, farmers are divided over this issue with the NGFA calling on Syngenta to cease distributing its DDGS corn until it can be sold for export.

Tagsagrculture, GMO, U.S.-China trade, ddgs, chinese gmo ban, environmental issues, corn, pigs, chickens, agriculture, syngenta