URBANDALE, Iowa - A delegation representing the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) departed March 25 on a 10-day trade mission to China. The purpose of the trip is to develop a province-to-state relationship between both current and potential buyers and Iowa producers of soybean products.

The group, which includes Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, will travel to Guangdong, a southern province of China that has 100 million people, the equivalent of a nation in itself. It is an area of concentrated livestock production area with the potential to be a major soybean customer.

Grant Kimberley, ISA’s director of market development, explained the group’s objective. “Our goal is to bring potential buyers and sellers together. The people we’ll meet are the feed producers, livestock producers, and grain traders of the region. We want to offer them as buyers the opportunity to buy soybean meal of higher quality and higher consistency than they can purchase elsewhere.”

The delegation will explain that Iowa is an excellent source for China’s soy needs, producing 11.9 million metric tons of soybeans in 2007, or approximately 16 percent of the nation’s soybeans. The state exported 2.6 million metric tons of soybeans last year.

Along with Northey and Kimberley, other members of the trade mission are Curt Sindergard, ISA president; John Heisdorffer, ISA president-elect; Kirk Leeds, ISA CEO; Ken Root, WHO Newsradio farm broadcaster; Peter Mishek, manager of international trade and business development for Ag Processing, Inc.; and Pete Lombardo, an AGP consultant.