By MARK BUTZOW

Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — A trade mission from Indiana to Mexico last week is a success to the state’s agriculture director and others.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch led a September 2018 trip with ag industry representatives to Canada’s Manitoba for face-to-face meetings with potential business partners and customers in the prairie province. This month she took a larger delegation of Indiana businesspeople and state leaders for five days of meetings in Mexico City and nearby Hidalgo state. They returned to Indiana on July 11.

Those two nations “are important from an ag perspective, important trading partners,” Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) Director Bruce Kettler said Friday, after returning to Indianapolis. “These countries are often No. 1 or No. 2 in receiving our exports, whatever the commodities are.”

Many sectors of the farming industry were represented on the trip, including pork, dairy, corn, soybeans, poultry, and lumber, as well as animal health, energy, and ag education.

“Tuesday, we had a breakfast with businesses, associations, and government entities that were interested in Indiana,” Kettler reported. “The day had a focus on food with contact between us and export councils. We visited a Costco and an upscale grocery.”

Wednesday was a productive day in Hidalgo, west of Mexico City. And on Thursday, Kettler met with Mexico’s secretary of agriculture.

“We had great discussions on sustainability, technology and the use of technology in agriculture. They have great openness to having Indiana invest in their agriculture sector.”

That view is shared by private-sector members of the trade delegation.

“I met a gentleman that owns a (lumber) distribution yard that I feel confident I’ll be able to put together some business with,” said Tom Oilar, president of Cole Hardwood in Logansport. “Bruce and Connie (Neininger, ISDA’s business development director) were instrumental in bringing folks in to match up with those of us on the trip.”

The state’s hardwoods industry may benefit in both the short run and long term from relationships formed on the trip.

“In Mexico, there was a great reception to the fact that we had somebody from that industry,” Kettler explained. “We’re fortunate, because of our soils and environment, we have high-quality hardwoods,” he added, noting Indiana is known for producing kitchen cabinets and hardwood furniture.

“We don’t always think of our forestlands and hardwoods as agriculture, but they really are.”

The goal of the Mexico trip was to “develop economic partnerships, strengthen agricultural ties, and showcase Indiana as a tourism destination,” Crouch’s office stated. Many events on the schedule included both the tourism and ag groups, but Kettler said the farm-related members separately traveled west of Mexico City for meetings in Hidalgo, signing a letter of intent with the state’s Secretary of Interior Simón Vargas Aguilar.

The agreement calls for enhanced cooperation in areas of agriculture, education, and science and technology. Included in the letter were several action items – for example, organizing industry events, providing opportunities to collaborate with experts, and sharing best practices.

“It spells out some areas we want to look at for further cooperation,” Kettler said. “Within the next several weeks, we’ll have conversations along the lines of education connections.

“In Hidalgo, Purdue and Vincennes (universities) ended up making a connection with the agriculture education people in the morning, so while we went to a dairy in the afternoon, they went to an agriculture school.”

That morning meeting took place at an industrial park, one of 12 in Hidalgo that have agriculture companies as tenants, and Kettler said they were looking for potential companies from Indiana that may want to go there and invest. “They wanted us to know of the high-quality infrastructure they could provide.”

Developing markets is an ongoing process, with Indiana’s commerce secretary making several trips to Mexico in recent years, but Kettler said bringing a diverse group of Indiana agriculture players to Mexico is also important.

“Mexico is relationship-driven,” he noted. “As connected as we are today, there’s still no substitute for face-to-face conversation, so these meetings were invaluable to growing our already strong agricultural and economic ties.”

Oilar agreed. “As a delegate group, we talked about it,” he said. “We hope they continue to do them, maybe not to new countries, but repeat trips to deepen the contacts.

“For me, it gets you a better idea of how to navigate. I gained that knowledge. I would feel comfortable going directly to potential customers.”