Trade Mission Recap

The Governor is back from his 9-day trade mission to Korea and Japan. It was an important trip for the Washington ag industry and Hector Castro with the Washington State Department of Agriculture says it was a good trip.

CASTRO: Agriculture was just one of the industries that we're represented on this trade mission. We had representatives from the Potato Commission, Blueberry Commission and Wine Commission as part of our group. Anytime you can have the meetings that you want to have it's a successful trade mission and we accomplished that. We wanted to meet with some of the big importers that are bringing our products in to Korea and Japan. We wanted to meet with some of the government officials in both these countries and simply make sure they're aware of some of the market access issue we want addressed.

The individual commissions held their own events as well.

CASTRO: The Potato Commission help promotional events for Washington potatoes in both Korea and Japan and Governor Inslee attended both those events and was handing out french fries.

Korea is the fifth largest market for Washington products and Japan is number one.

CASTRO: The thing you take away whenever you go on these trade missions is just the incredible value consumers in these countries place on Washington agricultural products. Washington products have a great reputation for being healthy and wholesome and frankly looking good. There's a lot of value placed on just the appearance of our agricultural products.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.