US Wheat Producers Competing with Cheaper Russian Wheat

US Wheat Associates Board Chairman, Michael Peters says they continue to work on building export markets for wheat. He points out one of the biggest challenges has been Russia.

"Russia has still been shipping out, you know, a lot of wheat over this past year when they've shipped it out at a lot cheaper price than what we're able to grow and produce it here in the US. So that has created some issues for us, you know, with our overseas customers. And even here in the United States, there's been a few more bushels imported than what we're used to seeing. But you know, that to me, means that organization like us weighs even more important to still be there on the ground for overseas customers and assuring them of our quality, you know, and educating them about how they can still use our wheat."

Educational efforts include:

"Quality tours, to show them the quality that we have in the crop quality booklet that we put out in the testing we do after harvest. We'll show them those numbers and explain to them how they can use that we have baking lab in several countries where we bring people into our lab and actually bake products, show them those products. We have many technical staff in our organizations. They understand the technical side of milling and baking wait like nobody else."

Peters adds that these educational efforts build relationships with other countries, which goes a long way in getting the wheat into new countries. Plus, he says competing countries are at the table and US wheat needs to be there as well in order to compete