Members of the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) are in Tucson, Arizona this week for their annual Strategic Planning Conference. Rusty Halvorson has more details.
USMEF Chair Randy Spronk, a pork and grain producer from Minnesota, will mark the end of his term of leadership of the organization. Spronk says one focus of the gathering will be on the personal relationships that drive global trade.
“We’re going to have Bob Ruth from National Pork Board, and we’re going to have Ross Havens from Cattlemen’s Beef Board on a panel with me, and it’s really talking about, how do we tell the story of those producers? And so it’ll be great to hear Bob and Ross and their commentary on, you know, traveling internationally with USMEF, and the take homes that they have, that they can actually then convey to producers on why it’s important to support USMEF.”
Spronk notes that over the past year USMEF has diversified its marketing footprint through additional funding from USDA’s new Regional Agricultural Promotion Program (RAPP), which has allowed expansion of resources in developing markets like Indonesia.
“Any time that we get funding to be able to come alongside our producer funds from our checkoff is important to us here. So we’ve got some opportunities here to create more diversification in some of these new markets here. I did have the opportunity to travel to Indonesia. You know, Indonesia, we don’t have a free trade agreement with but on the other hand, the tariffs are mild when we go there. And so you start talking about 280 million people, we’d have the ability to use RAPP funding for beef, pork and lamb to create new opportunities and diversify our markets.”
More details about the conference can be found on the USMEF website.