Corn gluten meal price

Corn gluten meal is a protein feed, fed to raise a ration's crude-protein content. On a dry-matter basis it runs about 66.3% crude protein and 89% TDN, roughly 0.94 Mcal of net energy for lactation per pound of dry matter, at about 91% dry matter as fed. Those figures come from University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension, Composition of Selected Livestock Feeds (FSA3043), from NRC Beef Cattle 1996 + Dairy One. Single reporting source. The leaderboard uses them to convert this week's board price into a cost per pound of protein and per pound of energy, so it can be ranked against corn and soybean meal. Prices are quoted per ton, and the cheapest board price is not the cheapest fed price once freight and moisture are counted (see the FOB-vs-delivered guide). Corn gluten meal is the concentrated protein pulled from the same wet-milling process that produces gluten feed and corn starch; the two names are easy to confuse but are not interchangeable, since meal runs far higher in protein and price. Poultry integrators are its signature buyer, prizing the xanthophyll pigments that color egg yolks and broiler skin, a trait few other protein feeds offer. It also digests slowly enough to work as a bypass protein in dairy rations, and pet food makers use it as a plant protein base. Coming from the same limited wet mills as gluten feed, its supply follows corn sweetener demand, not any protein crop.

What it actually is. A corn wet mill steeps kernels in water treated with sulfur dioxide until they soften, then splits the corn into four streams: germ for oil, bran and steep liquor for corn gluten feed, starch for sweeteners and ethanol, and the protein fraction. Drying that protein fraction gives corn gluten meal. USDA quotes it against a 60 percent protein spec, which works out near 66 percent crude protein on a dry-matter basis, several times what the corn going into the mill carried. The word gluten here means corn protein, mostly zein, and has no relation to the wheat gluten of baking.

Who buys it. Poultry is the anchor. Corn gluten meal carries xanthophyll pigments that put color into egg yolks and into broiler skin and shanks, so a layer or broiler formulator is buying something soybean meal cannot supply at any price, and pays for the pigment along with the protein. Dairy nutritionists use it for a different reason: most of its protein passes the rumen undegraded and is digested further down, which makes it a bypass protein where soybean meal is largely a rumen-degradable one. It is low in lysine, so it works beside a lysine-rich protein rather than in place of one. Pet food makers use it as a plant protein base, and aquaculture feed mills bid for the same tons.

The lawn market nobody in feed thinks about. Turfgrass researchers at Iowa State University found in the 1990s that corn gluten meal suppresses germinating weed seeds, and it has sold since as a natural pre-emergent for lawns and gardens. It doubles as a slow-release fertilizer, since a 60 percent protein meal runs close to 10 percent nitrogen by weight. Those volumes are small next to feed, but the bagged lawn product competes for the same material and answers to a customer who is far less sensitive to a dollar-per-ton move.

How it gets priced. The quote list is short. USDA publishes corn gluten meal per ton, FOB the plant in the Central US and delivered at St. Louis, against the same 60 percent spec, and that is close to the whole live market on the feedstuffs reports. Compare that with DDGS, which quotes out of dozens of regions because dry-grind ethanol plants sit all over the Corn Belt. Wet mills are few, large and expensive to build, so the tons come out of a handful of plants and the market is correspondingly thin.

What corn has to do with it. Less than the name suggests. A wet mill runs on sweetener, starch and ethanol demand, so how much gluten meal exists in a given month is set by the mill's grind rather than by anyone's appetite for protein. Corn price moves the cost of everything the mill makes, but gluten meal's own price is argued out against soybean meal, the protein this board benchmarks against, and against poultry demand for pigment. That is why it can hold a premium through a cheap-corn year and give ground in an expensive one. The cost-per-protein board puts this week's price on a per-pound-of-protein footing against soybean meal, the corn gluten meal vs soybean meal spread tracks the gap over time, and what drives corn gluten meal prices walks through the drivers one at a time.