USSEC and United Soybean Board (USB) director Bob Metz participated in a biotechnology seed outreach activity funded by the U.S. State Department from September 20-26.

The activity targeted the Heilongjiang State Farms (HSF), which is a state-owned enterprise (SOE) that farms over seven million acres of corn, soybeans, rice, pasture lands, and specialty crops. HSF’s current soybean plantings are just over 1 million acres and corn is at 2.2 million acres, none of which is planted with seeds offering the production advantages of biotechnology.
The purpose of the outreach activity was to convey the positive economic and environmental experiences of U.S. soybean and corn producers that have adopted biotechnology to HSF senior management. The expected outcome of the activity is that agriculture officials in the largest, most important SOE crop production company in China will become more comfortable with the prospects of planting biotechnology in China and convey their interests to utilize biotechnology to the Chinese government. This in turn will create an environment where new biotechnology events will be approved more quickly.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Shenyang Agriculture Trade Office, the Science and Technology office of the U.S. consulate in Shenyang, the U.S. Grains Council (USGC) and Syngenta also participated in this event.