Montana's grain facilities are increasingly owned by foreign companies and mulitnationals like EGT, Marubeni, Gavilon, Mitsui, CHS and others. Billings Gazette photo.
A sandstone butte bearing rare evidence of Lewis and Clark’s quest to discover ways for profiting from the American West gets most of the attention near Pompey’s Pillar in Montana, but a bigger, more modern mast of capitalism towers in the distance.
The United Grain elevator is big, fast — and Japanese. It holds roughly 1 million bushels of wheat, can load 110 railcar shuttles in 10 hours and represents a growing trend in the globalization of the farm economy. Asian countries with rapidly growing middle classes are buying commodities like never before. And to meet that demand, global corporations are doing whatever it takes, including acquiring elevators in Montana farm country.
“The game changer is obviously China,” said John McEnroe, executive vice president of country operations for CHS, America’s largest grain marketing cooperative. “When it’s growing at 6 to 9 percent (gross domestic product) each year, and they have a growing middle class, that causes exporters to expand their supply chain. What you see being built is mostly by multinational companies.”