9-20 IAN Phillipine Wheat

 Not very long ago, the Idaho wheat commission had dozens of people from several foreign nations including Japan, come and visit us regarding having our wheat exported to them. That was an extremely good thing. But now there is a team of flour millers from the Philippines is in the U.S. - their visit is being sponsored by U.S. Wheat Associates. Wheat Commission Marketing Specialist Erica Olson says the Philippines want to talk about unfairly priced flour imports. I don’t know that that is necessarily a good thing. “The Philippines actually imports a lot of flour from Turkey and that flower is subsidized by the Turkish government so that is a concern for the  Philippine flower millers because it affects their business. It is also an issue for us to be aware of because they are the number 2 customer for hard red spring wheat and if they are seeing increased imports of flour, that generally equates to less sweet than they are importing from us.”

Olson says the Philippine millers also want to find out about this year's spring wheat crop. “We are obviously going to tell them that supplies are down this year but protein is much higher than the last 2 years which they will be happy with, there have been some concerns about quality and we have seen some disease issues. Overall, I don’t think we have a lot to be concerned about, they will be happy with the protein but we will have to make them aware that supplies are lower this year and they will have to contract accordingly.