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Grassroots efforts to develop markets for U.S. red meat

The head of the U.S. Meat Export Federation says the organization utilizes checkoff dollars from partner organizations to develop and bolster markets around the world.

Dan Halstrom says Guatemala is a perfect example. “It wasn’t that many years ago where the prices reached a certain level, they stopped buying and they’d buy when the price was right,” he says.  “We even have markets like Guatemala now asking questions like Japan does.”

He tells Brownfield when countries become more consistent customers, the approach to market development changes. “We work with them, we provide the details with them, we do tasting demos,” he says.  “We work with their customers, and we work with their wholesaler that might buy from a distributor as well as a direct customers, retailers, et cetera.”

Halstrom says another region where USMEF sees opportunity is Africa, but it takes time to develop and grow demand in new areas. “That’s even further down the scale of emerging in the sense that not much has emerged yet, but the future is huge,” he says. 

Halstrom talks about how the organization and its staff work to grow markets.  “For example, we have an event planned next April in Ghana where we’re going to bring in probably 75 to 100 trade partners from around Africa into Ghana and really have a one-on-one seminar on US beef and US pork,” he says. “We’ll highlight what makes us different and what makes us better. What’s unique about us and provide a tasting opportunity. This sort of thing. So that’s really at the grassroots level a good example of what we do or try to do to tell our story and differentiate us from the competition and that value.”

AUDIO: Dan Halstrom, U.S. Meat Export Federation