Maine farmers see future in trade with China

DRESDEN – When two Maine farmers – one a former legislator, the other a current state representative – headed to China last month on an agricultural trade mission, their goal was to see how Maine farmers could fit into China’s burgeoning economy.

But the pair came away envisioning a very different role in developing China’s agriculture industry. Instead of aiming for sales – a “take-the-money-and-run” approach – Maine could partner with Mongolian farmers to take a broader, longer-lasting stance that could double China’s dairy output and provide lucrative contracts for Maine expertise, bull semen, cow embryos, seeds and technology, they concluded.

“We were talking sustainable agriculture,” former state Sen. Marge Kilkelly of Dresden said Monday. “But this turned out to also be sustainable trade.”

Kilkelly, who led the delegation, and state Rep. Nancy Smith, D-Monmouth, were part of a delegation to China sponsored by the Eastern Trade Council and the Northeast States Association For Agriculture Stewardship, of which Kilkelly is the director. Both groups are affiliates of the Eastern Regional Conference of the Council of State Governments. There were representatives from Maine, New York and Pennsylvania on the mission, all farmers themselves.

“This appeared to be an opportunity for the Northeast states to get into the export trade with China,” Kilkelly said, adding that she and Smith went primarily to look at China’s dairy industry. “We believed we could export embryos and semen to help build the quality of their herds,” she said.

Dairy products, never a staple in Asian diets, are becoming increasingly popular with Chinese youth, Smith said

“It is a generational thing. They are learning about cheese from McDonald’s [restaurants] and are really buying flavored yogurt,” she said.

New Zealand, Australia and Canada dairy industries are all very present in China already, Smith said. “This is going to happen and we can be a part of it,” she said.

But two days after arriving in Beijing, the pair were part of a 400-mile cross-country trek to inner Mongolia and their entire focus changed. There, farmers and the Chinese government were anxious for help. They already had purchased 60 high quality bulls, but their offspring were not producing what was expected.

“They are getting 8,000 pounds of milk per cow, per year,” said Smith. Maine cows individually average about 25,000 pounds of milk each year.

Smith and Kilkelly saw a great disconnect and a great opportunity. “We saw we could establish a good relationship because they had already had some failures,” Kilkelly said.

The farmers were not making the connection between proper feed, farm management and genetics. “It just became very clear that the issues of feed protein needed to be addressed,” Kilkelly said.

Now the challenge will be to build bridges between Maine producers, experts and manufacturers and the Mongolian province, the two farmers said.

“There are opportunities here for embryos, semen, technology, feed and seeds,” Smith said. “If it is not us that will provide this, someone else will.”

“We are not talking benevolent work,” Smith asserted. “This wouldn’t be for free. Maine producers and experts would be paid for their services.” Both the Chinese government and its farmers have money to put into learning methods to double their current production, which, at full capacity, provides only 50 percent of the country’s needs.

Chinese farmers, who have two to four cows each and milk at a communal station in each town, are paid the equivalent of $64 per hundredweight in American money. Maine farmers get around $16.

“You can see why it would benefit the entire economy if we double their production,” Smith said.

Smith said the mission involved five of the most intense days she has ever experienced, and Kilkelly likened the trip to a cow who fills itself up on feed and then steps back and chews its cud.

After ingesting all that information, she said, “We’re in the cud-chewing stage. We are asking a lot of questions, and since ETC has an office in China, we are already getting answers.”

Meanwhile, the two delegation members are arranging to have a farmer they met in China come to Maine next summer for a further exchange of information. The University of Maine also will be very involved in that exchange, said Kilkelly.

Smith said that any trade with China will help Maine’s farmers.

“We need both the support of local agriculture and the support of exports,” she said. “We can buy local while still selling our seed, our farmers’ expertise. The Northeast can have an incredible niche here.”