Xiongping Xie, CEO of Guangdong Liangjie International Trading Company Ltd., drives a combine on the Thiel farm near Malta Bend, with the help of Billy Thiel. Hanging on outside is Wei Wang, senior manager of purchasing center at DaChan Wanda (Tianjin) Co. Ltd. The group of Chinese grain buyers visited Thiel Farms on Friday, Oct. 26, as part of a 10 day Chinese Dried Distiller's Grains with Solubles buyer mission to the United States. (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge]

Nine delegates from large Chinese trading companies and two representatives from the U.S. Grains Council office in Beijing were able to find out a little more about farming in Saline County -- and America -- when they made two stops near Malta Bend on Friday, Oct. 26.

The stops, at Thiel Farms south of Malta Bend and at Central Missouri Agri-Service (CMAS) in Malta Bend, were part of a 10-day Chinese dried distiller's grains with solubles (DDGS) buyers mission sponsored by the U.S. Grains Council, held from Oct. 21 --31.

DDGS is the by-product of ethanol production and is higher in protein than corn.

Martene and Donnie Thiel open a gift presented to them from a delegation of Chinese grain buyers who visited the Thiel farm on Friday, Oct. 26. (Marcia Gorrell/Democrat-News) [Click to enlarge]

The delegates were from trading companies or feed enterprises that already use DDGS in their products, so one of the purposes of the trip was to receive an overall picture of the U.S. DDGS market.

"Mainly it is to promote DDGS, but these are also corn buyers, so it's a combination of feed millers and some traders, and within the feed millers is one technical person -- a nutritionist, but most of them are buyers," said Todd Meyer, country director of the U.S. Grains Council Beijing Office, explaining the delegation, which consisted of four women and five men.

Following a meal in the farm's shop, Billy Thiel explained their farm operation, which consists of himself, his brother Donnie and cousin Bryan.

Their fathers, Don and Louis, who started the farm, are retired, but still help during busy seasons. Communicating through a translator, Yishan Niu, assistant director of the grain councils Beijing office, Thiel explained the farm's use of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) mapping, and answered many questions about the length of harvest, marketing procedures and storage.

Carl "Bub" Caldwell of W.B. Young Company in Marshall was also on hand at Thiel's farm to explain the grain handling systems his company builds across Missouri and also answering several questions from the buyers.

The group took a walk-around tour of the farm, looking at Thiel's equipment and grain bins. Several delegates took pictures in front of a large four-wheel drive tractor and climbed inside Thiel's combine, taking a short drive, before the large group took a picture in front of the combine.

There is a huge difference between the typical U.S. farm operation and the Chinese farm, according to Gary Clark, of the Missouri Corn Growers Association, who was also accompanying the group Friday. The Corn Growers, who are members of the U.S. Grains Council, helped organize the trip to Saline County.

"A farm over there has one to two hectares or two and a half to five acres. They use manpower to put things in and take things out, where as we think we do, but in relationship we use a lot of machinery and very few people to do large acreages," explained Clark, who recently returned from a trip to China.

The group also took several pictures outside the private home of Donnie and Martene Thiel, near the farm's headquarters.

"This is the closest many of them will come to a private home (on this trip)," explained Meyer. Most of the delegation lives in large cities, some in Beijing and some in southern China.

"They are living in cities, so they are living in apartments. In the last 10 years, it has improved a lot; some of those are pretty nice now," he said. "Ten years ago, it was pretty rough living, cement, everything coarsely finished, nothing nice, nothing warm about them."

In the Chinese countryside, farmers live close together in villages in homes that are mostly brick, one story, with two rooms for a family of four.

"In a village there would be 50-100 houses together and everybody would have two to five acres of land. They might have a strip here and a strip there, about 20 rows wide. They try to make sure nobody gets all the good land or all the bad land, so they just give you a big strip," explained Meyer, originally a veterinarian from Connecticut, who has lived in China since 1988.

After leaving the Thiel farm, the group traveled to CMAS in Malta Bend, where manager Mike Otto showed the buyers one of the elevator's flat storage buildings, now full of corn from the 2007 harvest.

During the 10-day tour the group attended the International Distiller's Grain Conference in Chicago and also visited several elevators, a swine farm, a feed mill and an ethanol plant and met with transloaders in Kansas City who ship products overseas.

"One of the specific goals is for them to meet people who they can actually buy the DDGS from and to do the business with. We did that at the conference and we are going to meet a few other direct sellers between now and Wednesday before we leave," explained Meyer.

He said another part of the trip is to build the buyer's confidence in U.S. grain products.

"One of the other purposes is that we instill some confidence in us as suppliers, that the product that we are offering to sell is something that is safe, reliable, and consistent in quality and will meet their needs.

"We want to create that atmosphere of confidence for them," explained Meyer.

The members of the delegation were: Jiyu Guo, technical director for the Research Center of Husbandry and Aquaculture, Guangdon Haid Group Co. Ltd.; Wei He, business manager of Guangdong Fortune Grains Co. Ltd; Lixia Li, deputy manager of China Grains and Oils Group Feed Co. Ltd; Li Sheng, CEO of Guangdong Xinliang Feed Mill Plant; Wei Wang, senior manager of purchasing center DaChan Wanda (Tianjin) Co. Ltd.; Xiongping Xie, CEO of Guangdong Liangjie International Trading Co. Ltd.; Jiantao Yang, purchasing manger of Guangdong Haid Industrial Co. Ltd.; Zequan You, manager of international business, Department of Tongwei Co. Ltd.; and Xionqiu Zhang, manager of purchasing center DaChan Great Wall Beijing head office.

Contact Marcia Gorrell at

marshallag@socket.net