A major Japanese trading firm and an agricultural group that imports about 40 percent of the nation's feed grain will jointly purchase a U.S. grain company, a spokesman said Wednesday. The National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, or Zennoh, and C. Itoh Co., one of Japan's three largest trading houses, are completing an agreement to buy Consolidated Grain and Barge of St. Louis, Missouri, said a C. Itoh official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official said final details, including the purchase price and the share of investment by each party, would be worked out by the end of April. A Zennoh official said his organization planned to link its New Orleans-based export arm, the Zennoh Grain Center, with Consolidated Grain, which handles 3.3 million tons of corn and 750,000 tons of soybeans a year. Consolidated Grain, which operates primarily in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and Iowa, controls 30 grain silos and 650 barges used to transport grain. The Zennoh official, who also insisted on anonymity, denied a report in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun that Zennoh would use the company to apply pressure on grain-growing regions where farmers are pushing for an end to Japan's restrictions on beef and citrus fruit imports. Zennoh, which handles almost 40 percent of the 1.5 million tons of feed grain imported annually into Japan, has condemned U.S. demands for an end to the quotas.
