USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Daniel Whitley recently led a trade mission to the Philippines and says it was a successful trip.
“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,” he said. “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 opportunities to increase our exports and our presence in the region and, specifically, as a country.”
He said several commodities have their attention.
“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 competitors in the region.”
This story was contributed by NAFB.
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Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker who specializes in agriculture. She primarily reports on legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is a native of California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley.