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Trade missions foster healthy international appetite for Iowa porkIowa Iowa has been the country's top pork exporting state for most of the past 16 years for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the time and effort the Iowa Pork Producers Association puts into maintaining good relationships with the countries that buy Iowa pork. Iowa pork is exported to 27 different countries around the globe and IPPA has made it a point to visit several of those customers each year since 1989. A group of Iowa pork producers visited Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan in February. The IPPA trade missions are usually arranged in cooperation with the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the Unites States Meat Export Federation. "The biggest thing we're trying to accomplish on these meat missions is to put a face on the pork industry," said John Vossberg, IPPA president-elect and a producer from Janesville. "Face-to-face communication is very important in some of these countries, especially Japan." Vossberg has been on pork missions to several countries, including Poland, Russia, the European Union, and Mexico. He was part of the delegation that visited the Asian island nations last winter and he says, based on the overall export numbers, the missions are definitely successful. "We usually meet with meat processors and people who have their own slaughtering plants when we visit other nations," Vossberg said. "We're interested in what they're doing with our products and learning what's working and what's not. We're talking to the movers and shakers in these countries and they take us very seriously." The IPPA Foreign Market Development Committee selects and plans the mission destinations each year with the help of IDED Meat, Livestock and Genetics Marketing Manager Mark Fischer. "He's really good at knowing where things are happening and what countries may be having difficulties with us so we can help shore up our markets," said Vossberg. "We also get a lot of good feedback from USMEF." Among IPPA's top priorities are marketing Iowa pork, strengthening relationships with major importers of U.S. meat and expanding the export markets. The efforts seem to be paying off. U.S. Bureau of the Census pork export totals for the first half of the year show that Iowa fresh and frozen pork exports are at more than $390 million, an increase of nearly 57 percent over the same six-month period in 2007. To ensure those numbers remain strong, another group of Iowa pork producers will embark on another IPPA meat mission in December. 11/10/08 Date: 11/4/08 Advertisement
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