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Missouri unmilled rice – potential market in Egypt

Missouri rice producers might soon have a new export market for unmilled rice. Greg Yielding, with the Missouri Rice Council and U.S. Rice Producers tells Brownfield Egypt is very interested.

Because of water shortages caused by dams, Yielding says, Egypt won’t be able to grow as much rice, “Egypt has a lot of mills, a lot of rice mills. What’s happening is those rice mills will be idle. They won’t be working. They’ll just be sitting there with no rice to mill.”

Yielding and a Southeast Missouri State ag professor, Dr. Mike Aide, travelled to Egypt in July with their proposal to ship rough rice to that country and he says officials there are very interested, “It goes to the mill. They mill it. They get to hire people to run the mills. They get the benefit of the byproducts. The hulls. The bran.”

Yielding says rice hulls and bran sell for a lot more in Egypt than in the U.S. He says the process has begun to export rough rice. Yielding says the rice could be shipped across Egypt and re-exported to countries in the Middle East. Southeast Missouri is a major producer of medium grain rice, which Egypt prefers.

~Yielding is optimistic U.S. rice will soon be imported by China with the current trade war not having a negative impact on that process that has been in the works for well over a decade.

Interview with Greg Yielding~