Bill Farmer digs Seoul Food!

SEOUL, KOREA -- The USA Rice Federation participated in this year's Seoul Food & Hotel Exhibition, Asia's third largest food trade show that attracts more than 50,000 food service and hospitality professionals.  With a good cross-section of importers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and government officials, the show presented an excellent opportunity for USA Rice to showcase unique uses for U.S.-grown rice.

Five hundred rice taste test samples were handed out each day in the form of mushroom sushi or the Korean roll known as gimbap.  Staff showed off all types and forms of U.S. rice and distributed brochures and recipe books to hundreds of interested attendees.

South Korea imported more than 388,000 metric tons of rice in 2013, and the U.S. supplied 114,600 tons (29.5 percent).  Thirty percent of the total imports are earmarked for the table rice market, and more than half of that was U.S. medium grain milled rice (67,417 metric tons), reflecting a higher Korean consumer confidence in U.S. rice quality than rice from other origins.

"South Korea is expected to announce a change to its rice import regime in the World Trade Organization no later than September," said USA Rice Vice President of International Promotion Jim Guinn.  "That has resulted in renewed interest in imported rice among the trade, and this show was a good venue to familiarize them with a broad spectrum of U.S. rice varieties and the many uses available with them."  

Contact:  Bill Farmer, (832) 302-6710

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