U.S. Wheat Associates and export market development
Farm and Ranch December 23, 2010 U.S. Wheat Associates is the export market development arm of the U.S. wheat industry. It is funded by state wheat commissions like those in the Pacific Northwest and also receives federal funding which leverages grower money. A recent study done by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service concluded that for every dollar growers invest in export market development work they get a 23-dollar net return. U.S. Wheat has sixteen overseas offices that work in 100 countries. Vince Peterson is vice president of overseas operations. Peterson: “We do long term market development so we don‘t make huge changes year-to-year. We move some resources around a little bit. We are using people more broadly in Asia. For example, we have a guy who is our vice president in Singapore who came from the Portland grain trade some years ago and we are using him up in north Asia in the Korean market for example to help promote some of our risk management technologies. So we are looking for new ways to use the resources we have, better efficiencies, the talent we have on board and so hopefully we are making some progress as time goes by with those.” Peterson says U.S. Wheat has worked with the Washington Grain Commission on developing markets for soft white wheat in Central and South America. Peterson: “And frankly it is paying off. We have gone from maybe 50-thousand tons to almost 300-thousand tons a year. So, it is going quite well and we hope we can parlay that into bigger and better markets as we go forward.” I’m Bob Hoff on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
