05/05/05 Iraqis complete U.S. grain course

Farm and Ranch May 5, 2005 There were some special students in the recently completed International Grain Buying class at Kansas State University. Howard: "Six of the delegation the in short course are from Iraq including the Director General of the Iraqi Grain Board who is responsible for buying all the raw materials like wheat, rice and soybean meal." That's John Howard, director of the program at KSU, who says the Iraqis have been learning, quite simply, how to buy grain. Howard: "When they come into our two-week short course we have this time of year it is called Grain Purchasing. We show them how we grade our grain. How our markets work. How the price is discovered in the futures market and on the farm. We take them on a field trip to farms and basically, hopefully, influence them to buy U.S. sourced production." Howard says U.S. agriculture has already benefitted from the Iraqis' visit. Howard: "This team while they have been here has already bought a boat load of U.S. rice and they have also bought some U.S. wheat, hard red winter in fact. So, we are really proud of that." The Director of the Iraqi Grain Board says Iraqi consumers have a high preference for white flat bread that is baked in a vertical oven. That requires strong dough so the bread sticks to the side of the oven. The director said they would like to import more hard white wheat from the U.S. to use for blending with locally grown red wheat. The Iraqi delegation's training was sponsored by U.S. Wheat Associates. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.