Demand is intense as Midwest ethanol producers and processors do not expect local farmers to harvest much corn until early October, weeks later than usual.
“As fast as you can move it from the south to the north, we’re shipping it north,” said Ryan McClanahan, a merchandiser for Commodity Specialists Company, a grain trading and marketing company. “It’s the big thing right now.”
Jeff Duckworth, a corn buyer for ethanol maker Aventine Renewable Energy in Pekin, Ill., said harvest cannot come soon enough. There is “just barely” any old-crop corn left in local markets, Duckworth said.
Help is on the way. In Louisiana, for example, the harvest was 14 percent complete as of mid-August and is expected to total 122 million bushels, up a third from last year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.