Harvest tour yields insights for visitors and hosts

In October, a group of commodity traders, feed mill executives and buyers from China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand made a harvest tour through the Midwest. During an eight-day period, they split into two teams and logged 2,500 miles, gathering samples of the soybean crop as they visited producers and elevators in six states.

The trip was sponsored by Ag Processing, Inc.’s (AGP) Grays Harbor project, along with Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota soybean organizations.

Peter Mishek, the project’s managing consultant who led the group, says the purpose was to “establish AGP and its members with these customers as a safe, reliable and cooperative delivery system.”

Most importantly, the tour provided foreign customers an opportunity to meet personally some growers of the soybeans they purchase. By seeing farms where soybeans originate, as well as elevators, processing plants, train loading facilities and Grays Harbor, they learned firsthand how soybeans get to them.

The trip was scheduled during October to provide visitors an opportunity to experience harvest and get a lead on what to expect, regarding the quality of soybeans they might buy in the coming year. Unfortunately, October rains shut down much harvest activity, and they didn’t get much time in combines until the last legs of their trip, in Nebraska and Kansas.

Soybean harvest was in the early stages when the delegation visited Brian Kemp of Sibley, Iowa.  “They were especially interested in knowing what effect cool growing conditions and wet harvest season would have on quality,” Kemp reports.

Though it was pouring rain and the visitors were disappointed not to see Stan Hanson harvesting when they stopped at his Garretson, S.D., farm, they were able to get samples from loaded wagons in his shop and discuss soybean yields and protein levels.

“The value of a visit like this is that producers and end users are able to establish a relationship—a trust,” Hanson says.

The samples gathered were later analyzed by the AGP lab in Eagle Grove, Iowa. Testing revealed that, in most locations sampled, cool weather had probably kept protein levels below the desired 35 percent or more. Though there were pockets of higher quality soybeans, most had protein averages around 34.5 percent.

While weather is beyond growers’ control, Iowa Soybean Association Director of Market Development Grant Kimberley says this study confirms the value of planting high protein varieties. “As an industry, we must be aware that protein level is important to the end user. We need to continue working on improvements to maintain our export market, which is important to the price of soybeans,” Kimberley says.

AGP hopes to make the harvest tour an annual event. “By doing so, we hope sampling will verify trends in U.S. soybean attributes improving over time, thus helping promote the Midwest, in particular, as a quality supplier to Asian markets,” Mishek says.