The General Accounting Office's Review of Concerns About Quality in U.S. Grain Exports

In response to a congressional request, GAO discussed recent actions within the U.S. grain industry and the Department of Agriculture to change the way in which the United States markets its grain overseas. The Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) has determined that a number of grain elevators extract dust and dockage from airborne grain as it leaves the elevator, then add the dust or dockage back as it is loaded onto vessels for shipment overseas. FGIS surveys showed that either clean wheat was downgraded with dirtier wheat or a substantial amount of dirtier wheat was upgraded by the time it reached the export point. The current rounding rule, which allows a certain percentage of dust or dockage to go unreported, benefits the wheat seller, which receives wheat prices for dockage in the wheat being sold, while the buyer gets less wheat for what he paid. Because of an increasing number of foreign buyers' complaints about grain quality, the industry and FGIS need to: (1) improve the uniformity of grain quality; (2) conduct research on the need for restricting certain blending practices; and (3) design and oversee grain standards to ensure the competitiveness of U.S. grain relative to the grain of other exporting countries.