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COLOGNE, GERMANY -- USA Rice and several member companies are participating in Anuga 2015 here, the world's largest food and beverage trade fair where new products, innovations, food trends, and old favorites are on display. USA Rice has been exhibiting at Anuga for more than twenty years, and as in years past, all forms of U.S. rice are on display, from long grain white, brown, and parboiled, to Calrose, and even wild rice.
The show, that is expected to attract 155,000 attendees, opened Saturday and continues through Wednesday with more than 7,000 exhibitors from 108 countries including California's SunWest Foods, The Sun Valley Rice Company, In Harvest, and American Commodity Company.
"Attending this show is always a highlight for us," said John Hasbrook, vice president of SunWest. "So many of my customers are here, they all come to me instead of me having to hop all over the world. It's a good use of our time and efforts and we can display some of our exciting new products and beautiful, just-harvested California medium grain rice."
But challenges for the United States are also on display.
"The strong dollar is really having an impact," said Brendan O'Donnell, a representative of Sun Valley. "There's still a lot of interest in our rice, but the exchange rate is making all American products cost more, and that's encouraging some of our customers to look for other suppliers, even if they know it's going to be a lesser quality. They'll still buy U.S. rice for their high end customers, but not all of their customers can afford U.S. rice."
On the positive side, O'Donnell said he is seeing a lot of new interest coming out of the Middle East, though credit and payment terms are expected to be difficult here as well.
The USA Rice booth is located in a prominent position in the USA Pavilion and saw a special visitor on Saturday. USDA's Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Michael T. Scuse stopped by on his way to the ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open the pavilion and chatted with Chris Crutchfield, president of American Commodity Company.
The pair talked about the importance of trade fairs like Anuga and the teamwork that goes into them to spread U.S. products around the world, and developments in two potentially new and exciting markets for America's rice industry: China and Cuba.
Scuse told Crutchfield he's hopeful Congress would take action to allow companies to extend credit to Cuba and to let groups like USA Rice use USDA promotion money in the country.
"Once those things happen, I think we'll see significant increases in agricultural trade with Cuba and be able to open that market up for all kinds of American products," he said.
On China, Scuse said he knows there's demand for U.S. rice there, so it's just a matter of the Chinese government signing the phytosanitary agreement that he is hopeful will happen sooner rather than later.
"It was a pleasure to visit with Under Secretary Scuse again, he's been a great cheerleader for U.S. rice, and hosting him in the USA Rice booth was quite special," said Crutchfield. "The opening of new markets he was talking about is very important to the U.S. industry, especially given the many challenges and realities we're seeing here at Anuga. With about half our crop destined for overseas markets, the more options we all have, the better off we'll all be."
Coming Up: USA Rice Daily sits down with some of the biggest rice traders and brokers for an in depth look at some of the challenges facing the U.S. industry in Europe.
