Page 12 - Export or Bust eBook

said, India poses “a huge opportunity for our industry, and we’re just at the cusp of getting our first
shipments into India.”

Despite the inherent and imposed limits, Sumner explains that there is little commercial poultry
processing in India and most birds are traded live. Thus, there is opportunity for exporting to restaurants
and fast-food services there.

What’s more, he said, “there is a sort of trend with vegetarians switching over and becoming what
they call ‘chickentarians.’ Chicken is the first alternative to strict vegetarianism that they’re
turning to,” he said.

India’s sturdy borders against most food imports have long kept that market out of sight and out of mind
for many U.S. exporters. Now, poultry processors aren’t the only Americans taking a new look at the
huge country, home to a sixth of the world’s consumers.

Here's one reason for that. USDA’s Johansson says while the number of Chinese households rising into
the middle-class are projected to double by 2026, they’ll nearly triple in India by that year.

U.S. exporters and the Trump administration are now giving farm export sales to India a lot of attention.
President Trump, intent on striking new bilateral trade agreements, is eager to expand trade with India.
For example, USDA Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Ted McKinney had
been on the job for about six months and had already been to India twice.

What’s more, “I’m going to go back,” McKinney declared at the recent Agri-Pulse Ag & Food Policy
Summit in Washington. But, he said, “It’s going to be a bear to do business there. Every time
somebody (in India) squeals, a tariff goes up. But guess what? Every journey ... begins with a
single step. How many remember watching TV when Air Force One landed, of all places, in China
(for former President Nixon’s famous 1972 Beijing visit).” The U.S. had virtually no agricultural
trade with China back then, he pointed out.

Salmonsen, of AFBF, agrees India will be a hard nut to crack. So many in India are involved in farming
and are sensitive about imports, “and new access is always a political problem. We’ll just have to keep
working with them,” he says.

Sutter, too, has India in his sights. “In terms of developing markets for the future, we want to be
looking at where are the large population centers ... and where is there likely to be growth in
demand. The Asian subcontinent ... India, Pakistan, Bangladesh ... we think that area has real
potential for demand growth.”

To facilitate demand in that region, he says, “it gets back to what we were doing in China 20 years ago.
Teaching people how to process soybeans ... how to better feed chickens ... how to do aquaculture ...
doing risk management courses ... pairing best practices with our customers.” His organization is
looking at Nigeria in much the same way. It is “a young basic market” with “a lot of income, a lot of
people.”

Apples excel in foreign markets

Meanwhile, some Americans are already making headway in India. In fact, for apple exports, after
Mexico and Canada, the two top foreign destinations, India joins the leading markets of Taiwan, Hong

10 www.Agri-Pulse.com