USDA Trade Mission to the Philippines a Success

USDA Trade Mission to the Philippines a Success

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Daniel Whitely recently led a trade mission to the Philippines and said it was a very successful trip.

Whitely… “It really was fantastic to connect with our stakeholders, our buyers, and importers. The Philippines is our eighth-largest market for U.S. agricultural and food products, coming in just over $3 billion annually during the last five years. But I gotta tell you, after being there on the ground, there's a lot of potential to do a lot better. They are very, very interested in strengthening their trade ties with American agriculture, and there's a lot of opportunity to increase our exports and our presence in the region and, specifically, as a country.”

Whitely said Filipino buyers value reliability more than ever, and view American agriculture as the most reliable supplier in the world.

Whitely… “They were very interested in more soymeal as they anticipate increasing their animal agriculture. They were also looking at importing more U.S. corn. They do have a domestic corn industry, but it needs to be supplemented to meet their domestic needs, so they were thinking about corn. They were also looking at more pork products as they rebuild their own hog herd. They were also looking for some dairy products. So, a lot of the top products in which were very competitive and have comparative advantages over many of our competition in the region.”

Again that’s Daniel Whitely of the Foreign Agricultural Service.

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