Connections were the focal point of Northern Soy Marketing’s (NSM) journey to San Francisco for Soy Connext, which took place Aug. 19-21.
“Soy Connext is where the world’s soybean buyers and American soybean suppliers come together,” said NSM Chair Glen Groth, who was unable to attend the conference this year. “It’s important that we take our message there where we can connect directly with buyers and hopefully make some headway.”
And connect they did. The conference, billed as the Global U.S. Soy Summit, is hosted by the U.S. Soybean Export Council and welcomed more than 400 international soy customers from over 60 countries.
“They set a record on attendance,” said NSM Board Member Mike McCranie, who attended. “The ratio of purchasers and sellers wasn’t quite half and half, but it was close.”
International customers from Southeast Asia have long been a focus for NSM’s messaging.
“We are very competitive in the Southeast Asia market,” said McCranie, who farms in South Dakota. “Northern-grown soybeans leaving the U.S. through the Pacific Northwest can often times beat the price of beans that have the extra cost of going either around the bottom of South America or through the canal.”
But at the core of NSM’s messaging is the nutritional value of northern-grown soy for livestock feed.
“Our soybeans in the northern area have a superior amino acid profile relative to soybeans grown elsewhere,” said Groth, who farms in Minnesota. “We have clean beans, and we transport them in an efficient manner.”
Traditionally, soybean quality has been based upon crude protein content which is only an estimate of the total amino acids based on the level of nitrogen detected. Therefore, in an effort to change the language of soybean quality, NSM encourages the adoption of the critical amino acid value (CAAV); CAAV is a calculation of the sum of the five most critical amino acids – lysine, cysteine, methionine, threonine and tryptophan.
“Everyone I talked to said that our quality was better,” McCranie said. “Another word that kept coming up was ‘consistent.’ As a soybean grower, the quality that we have is very important.”
As the NSM delegation, which also included University of Minnesota Extension soybean agronomist and NSM consultant Seth Naeve, headed back to the Upper Midwest, they reflected on a successful event.
“Getting facetime with international customers is critical,” said Katelyn Engquist, NSM market development project manager. “Soy Connext was an excellent opportunity for us to actively engage with the people who are making purchasing decisions.”
