Filipino soybean buyers make their way across the Midwest
WOLSEY, S.D.— Around 25 soybean purchasers from the Philippines traveled across North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska this week, seeing the process of how the U.S. commodity is grown.
For the visitors, the landscape of the Midwest is different than what they are used to.
"It's funny, you know, that you get on a bus, you sleep for a bit, in a couple of hours and you wake up and it's still a farm. That's something very new," said participant Kitt Kitane. "Our farms back home are pretty small compared to what you guys have here."
Kitane is the director of procurement for a feed milling company in the Philippines. His company purchases around 90% of their soybean meal from the United States.
"Just in our company alone, soybean meal is about maybe the second or third biggest component in our feed manufacturing," he said. "So, understanding the whole supply chain really is a good tool. It's able to help us understand when to position, how to best use it and make our feed even much better."
For farmer David Struck of Wolsey, South Dakota, inviting international groups onto his operation helps to create personal relationships and promote doing business between the countries.
"They like to put a face to the name and meet the people who are actually raising crops," Struck said.
The soybeans are a couple weeks behind, so the tour wasn't able to see harvest at the Struck farm, but they were able to get an up-close look at everything it takes to run a farming operation in South Dakota.
"We'll show them the equipment mostly," Struck said. "They like to see the combines, the tractors, how we do things over here because it's so vastly different than from what it is in other countries."
"Our main goal here is just to see how the new crop is going, basically understanding the whole supply chain end to end, of what we use back in the feed mill back home," Kitane said. "It's been a great two days I would say. We've been to different farms and it's kind of inspiring. I am sure we will be taking a lot of great insights and inspiration that we can bring back home and maybe do something better also with our facilities."
A lot of the participants were young people who will eventually be running the businesses they represent.
"They are like the Gen Z generation, and they will soon eventually take over the family business," said Marie Marte, president of MCM International. "So, we want to teach them everything they need to know about soybean meal."
"Soybean meal isn't just any raw material, right? So, understanding it, how it's being planted, what affects the planting and how it correlates with the prices definitely will give us a head start of what to expect," Kitane said.
Struck hopes that this experience provided the buyers a face to their product.
"That we are not faceless and nameless, you know, we're family farmers out here in the Dakotas," he said. "We are five generations here on this place. We take care of the land we care about what we do."
"Trips like this, I would definitely recommend, especially if you're into procurement and some decision making," Kitane said.
After their tour of the Midwest, the group planned to travel to the Pacific Northwest to tour the shipping ports.
