A team of Japanese mainstream media, food industry media in combination with an opinion leader visited Nebraska last week for meetings and visits with corn farmers, industry organizations, and biotech seed companies to receive a firsthand information on how U.S. biotechnology help increasing U.S. corn production with the growing demand for feed, food, fuel and exports of U.S. Corn. The group is traveling through the United States with the U.S. Grains Council who the Nebraska Corn Board partners with on programs to promote and expand exports of corn and corn co-products.
The team met earlier in the week with the National Corn Growers Association and were eager to learn about how American farming works to help feed and fuel the world.
One of the reasons for visiting Nebraska was to visit Monsanto’s Water Learning Center in Gothenburg. Another was for the team to observe the benefits of biotechnology to stable corn production by taking drought tolerant corn traits as an example – in a area that experienced drought conditions last year and continue into this growing season in areas.
The team also stopped at Nebraska Corn Board director, Curt Friesen’s farm near Henderson. Curt demonstrated his sub-surface irrigation system, as well as talking about his center-pivot and pipe forms of irrigation.
On Thursday morning, the team joined Nebraska Corn Board staff for breakfast where Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center updated the team on the current status of drought in the U.S. and Nebraska, as well as sharing historical figures of drought trends on corn crop producing areas.
The journalists represented news media with a combined circulation of about 27 million, representing the Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Sankei Shimbun and Japan Food Journal newspapers, as well as the Jiji Press news service. After leaving Nebraska, the team headed to Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings.
No comments:
Post a Comment