(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig is back in Iowa after a nine-day trade mission to Vietnam and Indonesia. He says there are exciting prospects in Southeast Asia. “Between the Phillippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, you’ve got some of the fastest growing economies in the world,” Naig said, “and lots of opportunity for even a lot more business there.”

A dozen representatives of Iowa commodity groups were part of the delegation and Naig says there’s a significant opportunity to boost pork exports to Vietnam. “Vietnam is very pork friendly. They want a lot of pork in their diet,” Naig said. “In Indonesia — the fourth largest country by population in the world, the largest Muslim population, what you’re talking about there is, yes, some pork will make it in there. It’s a small percent of their population, but really beef is the significant opportunity in Indonesia.”

Vietnam is among the world’s top 10 importers of U-S agricultural goods. Naig led a previous trade mission to Vietnam in 2023 and a large delegation of Vietnamese officials were in Iowa this past June. “The Minister of Agriculture came and signed, in total, $1.4 billion worth of purchase agreements in the U.S.,” Naig said. “$800 million of that was in Iowa, so this was kind of a follow on to that.” Naig says the last Iowa-led trade mission to Indonesia was quite some time ago.

“Indonesia was new and we learned a lot. There are some challenges there. It’s a good soybean market. It’s a strong (dried distillers grain) market, but, you know, there are some barriers to doing business there and we have strong competitors in that market, so it was interesting to learn those things, which is always good,” Naig said. “You’ve got to be on the ground sometimes to figure those things out.”

Brazil, China and Australia are currently Indonesia’s leading suppliers of agricultural goods, with the U.S. accounting for about 10 percent of Indonesia’s ag imports last year.