Opening the Hong Kong Export Market

Opening the Hong Kong Export Market. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Opening trade with other countries and cultures is a great way to ensure local ag products are being enjoyed by the rest of the world. It allows everyone to experience something special from somewhere else. Dan Newhouse, Washington State Department of Agriculture's Director along with his counterpart in Oregon, Katy Coba have been working to open these export markets for northwest products. NEWHOUSE: Last November we took what we think is probably the first ever joint trade mission utilizing the Departments of Agriculture from two different states, Oregon and Washington. We went to Hong Kong as well as Taiwan and the Philippines and we are still seeing, I guess you could say the fruits of our labors from that trip. They met with a lot of people and developed good contacts to try and get doors to open. NEWHOUSE: This summer one of the contacts we made while we were in Hong Kong, a large grocery store chain in that city held a fairly long, a three week long promotional program for northwest products which we are very happy to have been able to participate in. Both of our states had products featured in those promotions and from what I am hearing the response has been very good. Both Newhouse and Coba are excited about the prospects for even more exports in the near future to this market. Newhouse talks about the importance of the Hong Kong marketplace. NEWHOUSE: You know there are several things about that I suppose Greg, I've been there a couple of times and I think that certainly it's a large city. There's a lot of affluence in that city as well, a lot of disposable income so that there are customers within that city that certainly we were targeting and probably just as significantly Hong Kong seems to be what you call the gateway to mainland China as far as a lot of the products that get into the large country of China. Washington Governor Gregoire has charged the state government with boosting exports of Washington products by $600 million over the next five years. NEWHOUSE: Well it's certainly an ambitious thing for us to do and I think realistic too. The federal government has embarked on a national export with that effort. The Governor has started a Washington initiative to try to take advantage of some of the focus coming from the national administration. And certainly it's a big goal to increase our exports by that large of number but very important to us as an export dependent state. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.