COURTLAND - An international trade team from Pakistan visited the Steve and Bruce Hulke farm near Courtland Monday to make personal connections and better understand modern agriculture.
The Hulke brothers grow 330 acres of soybeans and 330 acres of corn in addition to raising beef cattle.
Sponsored by the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council (MSR&PC), the visit included key players in Pakistan's food industry.
Staff photo by Fritz Busch
Steve and Bruce Hulke talk with key leaders of the food industry in Pakistan on Monday at the Hulke farm in rural Courtland. The Pakistanis are interested in buying value-added soy proteins that will improve nutrition in their country.
Delegation members are interested in buying value-added soy proteins for baking and meat processing. The product could be used in restaurant offerings, including pizza toppings.
The trip gives Pakistani business leaders information on why they should support reductions on tariffs that restrict their ability to offer high-protein U.S. soy to aid food nutrition.
"Pakistani food is insufficient and protein deficient," said Jim Hershey, WISHH executive director.
Soy protein, which has been shown to promote healthy growth, could be especially important in Pakistan, where, according to the World Bank, 42 percent of children under age five have low height for their age.
For value-added soy products, the compounding effect of Pakistan's duty structure creates a total duty of 39.22 percent, which discourages trade. For textured soy protein, a 50 percent up-front custom duty plus compounding remaining duties yields an 89.4 percent total import duty.
The sixth-most populous country in the world with 187 million people in a country the size of California, Pakistan has four seasons and many small farms that produce wheat, cotton, rice, sugarcane, corn, and chickpeas. It does not produce soybeans.
Pakistani agriculture is characterized by low productivity, limited investment, inefficient resource use, droughts, and many landless sharecroppers and agriculture laborers.
Other major issues facing Pakistan agriculture are lack of adequate irrigation, need for improved marketing infrastructure, World Trade Organization compliant sanitary regulations, avian flu surveillance, and development of plant and animal genetics.
Pakistan entered into free trade agreements (FTA) with China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and it has exchanged a draft FTA with Singapore.
A Trade and Investment Framework Agreement has been in place between Pakistan and the U.S. since 2003. The countries are negotiating a Bilateral Investment Treaty.
As part of the trip, the group will travel to Mankato to receive soy flour utilization training.
They will also meet with other state soybean leaders to create relationships for future cooperation and sales opportunities to benefit Pakistan and U.S. soybean growers and processors.
(Fritz Busch can be e-mailed at email@example.com).