On 12/31/2011 4:21 PM, dpb wrote:
....
over last decade have exported an average of roughly 1,500,000 metric
tonnes (that's 55,000 bu. ...

Sorry, inadvertently dropped a 1K multiplier--that 55,000,000 bu average
exports/yr over last 10 years or so.

For comparison, they averaged importing more than that exports about
half the time---oh, heck, here...

in thousands of bushels
year imports exports deficit (E-I)
2001 40,040 55,440 15,400
2002 15,327 62,993 47,667
2003 137,463 103,547 (33,917)
2004 247,390 42,937 (204,453)
2005 41,397 51,223 9,827
2006 14,227 102,043 87,817
2007 1,797 103,950 102,153
2008 17,637 26,510 8,873
2009 51,113 32,707 (18,407)
2010 33,990 34,503 513
2011 55,000 36,667 (18,333)
Avg 59,580 59,320 (260)

So on average over last decade they about break even between imports and
exports but there are large fluctuations, particularly on the import
side where 2003-4 were heavy on the import side. W/O those, they're a
net exporter.

I got lazy and didn't go get production data again to put on top of it;
I'll leave that as "exercise for the student"...

--