Attaches tour rice, poultry, wine sites

STUTTGART -- Vangile Titi-Msumza, a South African agricultural attache based in Washington, D.C., liked what she saw at a poultry farm in Farmington. Her counterpart from New Zealand was excited to see rice and cotton production for the first time.

Twenty-eight agricultural attaches from 26 countries wrapped up a tour of farm and food processing operations in Arkansas on Wednesday before moving on to visit similar facilities in Louisiana. The tour, organized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was designed to create export opportunities for Arkansas farmers.

"It's developing relationships and creating opportunities and introducing the attaches to Arkansas agriculture," Arkansas Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward said. "That can open up doors down the road."

Ward spoke at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Rice Research Station in Stuttgart, where the group stopped for lunch and a presentation on rice production in Arkansas.

The tour began with meetings Monday in Northwest Arkansas with representatives of Tyson Foods Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores. Inc., and included visits to Post Winery and Vineyard in Altus and Keo Fish Farms, and dinners hosted by agriculture trade groups.

Titi-Msumza said she was particularly interested to see how chickens were grown in Arkansas. She was pleased that they were not densely packed into cages, which can increase the risk of disease.

"I was actually very impressed," she said. "The United States is a very big country, so we need to appreciate differences in approaches to agriculture among the states."

Janine Collier, first secretary of trade and agriculture at the New Zealand Embassy, was impressed by the rice and cotton operations she visited. New Zealand is a leading exporter of dairy products, and she was interested in similarities between the way dairy and rice trade on the global market.

Yvette Wedderburn Bomershein, a director in the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, which organized the tour, said a stop at American Vegetable Soybean and Edamame Inc. in Mulberry was a good example of how the tour can be educational for even well-traveled agricultural officials.

"There were people on the tour that didn't know what edamame was," she said. "One person thought it was cheese."

Raymond Chung, president of American Vegetable Soybean and Edamame, was pleased to make a pitch for his product. His company already exports processed edamame to Asia, he said, and several tour participants told him edamame is popular in Europe.

"Looking forward, I'm optimistic about the opportunity to export our product to places like Europe," he said in a telephone interview.

This year's tour marks the second time the service has brought its annual orientation tour to Arkansas. Participants included delegates from the European Union, individual European countries, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Ward plans to travel with Gov. Asa Hutchinson to Cuba later this month when the governor leads a state delegation there to look for ways to develop trade ties as relations between the two countries improve. A partial trade embargo is still in place, but Ward said Cuba could constitute a $35 million market for Arkansas agricultural products if the embargo is lifted. It's important to build relationships with Cuban officials now so that the state can capitalize if the embargo is ultimately lifted.

Business on 09/03/2015

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