Building Relationships With Buyers Through the Soybean Checkoff

A big part of expanding and maintaining export markets is bringing customers and buyers together. During the See For Yourself International Marketing Mission trip attendees got to meet with trade teams from China and the Mideast.

Tuesday, a trade team of 20 Chinese buyers toured the Port of New Orleans and ate lunch with our group. The trade team included representatives from feed, poultry, pork, and other agricultural companies in China.

“I really enjoyed being on the bus with the Chinese team and talking with them. I was pleasantly surprised by their strong interest in all aspects of our farms from business structure and financing to production practices and grain marketing,” says Kent Bosch, a soybean grower from Montevideo, Minn. “I felt like we really made a connection with them.”

Every fourth row of U.S. soybean production is exported to China and the market continues to grow. China is the number one poultry producer in the world. It also produces 70 percent of the world’s aquaculture and half of the world’s pork. Twenty years ago, almost no soybean meal was imported by China.

Thursday night we met with the trade delegation from the Mideast at a reception while attending the International Poultry Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. Our group enjoyed meeting representatives from the feed and poultry industry from Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and several other countries.  The reception was a great success with everyone reluctant to see it end. There was great interaction among the buyers and the Minnesota soybean growers and livestock producers.

Several foreign buyers asked some of the Minnesota farmers if they could buy soybeans direct from them. The amounts they wanted to purchase were staggering to the growers. “Two guys from Egypt who raise chickens asked me if they could buy 500,000 tons of corn and 200,000 tons of soybeans directly from me! I was amazed,” says Bruce Schmoll a grower from Fairmont, Minn. who is also on the board of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association.

Turkey and Egypt are the top two export markets for U.S. soybeans in the region. Together they buy two million metric tons of soybean products, annually. The region’s soybean and soybean meal purchases over the past five years have grown from less than two million metric ton to 3.5 million metric tons. Turkey produces 1.2 million metric ton of poultry meat.

“Twenty years ago, farmers in the region didn’t know that soybeans and corn should be used in poultry diets for faster growth,” says Sinan Goker, a commercial specialist from the American Soybean Association who works in the region. “The checkoff dollars have helped us educate people.  We bring teams from the region to the U.S. to visit companies, universities and expositions like this International Poultry Expo.  We also send consultants in nutrition and marketing to the region to share their knowledge and promote the use of soybeans in diets.”

There were 20 Iraqi representatives at the event and two times that many had wanted to come, but were not able to due to heightened security just prior to the trip. We learned Iraq is eager to rebuild its poultry and food industry as the country becomes more secure. “Our aim is to increase business ties between the U.S and Iraq,” says Mohammed Ibrahim, who works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service in Baghdad. “It’s important for the Iraqis to see American civilian faces and get to know them personally.”

“When you haven’t had the opportunity to meet people from another country your impressions are different than once you’ve met them.  Then you realize that you have a lot more in common than you thought,” says Belinda Sanders, a soybean grower from Benson, Minn. attending the Mideast trade reception. “I feel like we really accomplished a lot and the impressions we made will really make a difference to our trade relations.”

“It was impressive for our group to meet these foreign buyers and talk with them one on one. We were able to put a face on our product. Building these relationships is so important because we won’t survive if we rely on our domestic market alone,” says Schmoll.

John Zimmerman, a turkey producer and director for the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association and Minnesota Turkey Research and Promotion Council agrees, “It’s important to build trade relations. You never can have too many revenue streams for your product. The Minnesota Soybean Growers do a good job of this and I appreciate them working to understand all end users of their product.”

The U.S. Soybean Export Council, supported by the Minnesota soybean checkoff, works on market development and promotes soybeans in 80 countries with 125 representatives worldwide.