Promoting Soybeans at the International Poultry Expo

On Thursday and Friday, we attended the International Poultry Expo in Atlanta, Ga. With over 800 exhibitors, it is the world’s largest display of technology, equipment, supplies and services used in the production and processing of poultry and eggs.  All segments of the industry are represented: feed milling, hatchery, live production, processing and marketing. About 19,000 people attended the show from more than 90 countries.

“The poultry expo has been so informative. I wasn’t aware that poultry is our biggest consumer of soybean meal,” notes soybean grower Jade Estling of Roosevelt, Minn.  In fact, more than half of U.S. soybeans processed for livestock feed are fed to poultry.

We not only attended the show, we worked a shift in the USSEC (U.S Soybean Export Council) booth. USSEC conducts marketing activities and provides technical assistance in key markets throughout the world to increase demand and consumption of U.S. soybeans. It is funded by producer checkoff dollars.

“I was really impressed with how many people stopped by the USSEC booth when I was working my shift.  I talked with people from Mexico, Egypt, China and many other places,” says Lawrence Sukalski, a soybean grower from Fairmont, Minn. who serves on the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association board.  “There are so many opportunities to expand our exports as these countries’ economies improve.”

Soybean grower Bruce Peterson from Northfield, Minn. agrees, “Every country we talked to said they wanted to build their livestock industry and they wanted to eat more meat—that means more demand for our grains and meat in the future.”

Participant Barbara Frank, a member of the Minnesota Broiler Board who raises laying hens in Danube, Minn., says, “The absolute highlight for me was meeting with the Mideast trade delegation. I talked extensively with a Turkish poultry laying complex manager. Through an interpreter, we learned we were doing a lot of the same things in our businesses. It was a ‘jazzing’ situation to learn how much we have in common with other people in the world. When you meet with people one-on-one, like we did, you realize we are all citizens of the world first before we are Americans or Turks.  Before this trip,  I didn’t know the soybean growers did so much to build international markets for both soybeans and poultry.”

While sharing dinner with the representatives of the Minnesota Turkey Board and poultry industry, we learned that Minnesota is the top state for turkey production with 45 million birds produced annually by 250 producers on 600 turkey farms. The state is home to three turkey processors: Jenni-O Turkey Store, Turkey Valley Farms and Northern Pride. While the industry has had a couple of tough years, outlook for 2010 is brighter. The U.S. poultry industry exports 15 percent of its broiler production, 10 percent of its turkey production and 8 percent of its egg production

“Minnesota Turkey has a strong partnership with Minnesota Soybean. Soybean checkoff-funded export activities have allowed new markets to take off faster,” said Steve Olson, executive director, Minnesota Turkey. “There is huge growth potential for turkey consumption around the world. Currently, the Chinese do not eat turkey, but that could change with chef training and other education.” China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have 20 percent of the world’s population with 104 cities with at least one million people! If just five percent eat turkey, we’ll see huge increases in soybean meal usage and exports. Currently, Mexico is the largest importer of turkey.

Animal Agriculture under Attack

While at the Expo, a large number of us attended a session titled, “Animal Agriculture under Attack.”  Blake Hurst, a Missouri farmer, author and vice president of the Missouri Farm Bureau Federation, provided a farmer’s perspective and refuted false statements that have been made in the media concerning commercial agriculture. “Agriculture has made decisions that we can be proud of. We can win this argument on their battlefield, if we but tell our story,” Hurst told the audience. He also said, “We can’t let others define us. We must read, open up our farms, open up our pocketbooks… and we must learn to stick together as an industry.” For more details view his article, “The Omnivore’s Delusion,” that appeared in the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute. Here’s the link: http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/the-omnivore2019s-delusion-against-the-agri-intellectuals.

Also speaking was Dr. Wes Jamison, associate professor of communication, Palm Beach Atlantic University. He explained that the Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) campaign to demonize agriculture uses a multi-pronged approach that includes: legislation, retail activism, direct action and proselytism. He notes that HSUS has 12 million members and a budget of $222 million. “The Society’s ‘Animals and Religion’ campaign tries to make a connection between people’s faith and food, their spirituality and their sustenance,” says Jamison. “They’re trying to make people feel that eating meat is immoral.”  He went on to say, “Agriculture cannot use science and economics to win this battle.  It needs to respond with an emotional appeal as well.” He suggests using a counterstrategy that differentiates between ‘companion animals and cuisine’ and gives consumers permission to eat meat without feeling guilty. He also believes that showing the messy, dirty parts of real agriculture and food processing can “inoculate” people against images shown by animal activists.

Soybean grower Jeff Tank of Hayfied, Minn. found the discussion thought-provoking. “We need animal agriculture in our country. If they are being attacked, we need to help them out or there will be huge fallout for all of us farmers,” he says. “We need to be activists for agriculture and educate the public on what’s really happening on our commercial farms.”

Panamax Ship at Bunge Export Terminal

A Panamax ship, like this one that we saw at the Bunge export terminal in Destrehan, La., will hold two million bushels of soybeans, or the production from about 50,000 acres!  Panamax ships are the largest ships that can pass through the Panama Canal. This ship had one million bushels of soybeans on it.

The barge next to the ship has soybean hull pellets from the Bunge soybean crushing plant that will be loaded onto the ship for export. Bunge is the only export elevator with a soybean processing plant at the terminal. It crushes 2.5 barges of soybeans a day. All of the pellets, the oil and soybean meal from this crush plant are exported.

The Bunge terminal can unload 22 barges in 24 hours. It can load a barge with 50,000 bushels in about 50 minutes. Every day, up to one million bushels of grain is shipped in and one million bushels of grain is shipped out of the facility.

Back to Minnesota

Our team flew back to Minnesota on Friday with a much better understanding of how the soybean checkoff works to build international markets for U.S. soybean growers.  We also made a lot of great friendships and connections on the trip, among ourselves and those we met from around the world. Thanks for following our trip on this blog.