USMEF Hosts Korean Retail Meat Buyer Team

Home meal replacement (HMR) is one of the hottest food trends among South Korean consumers, and a team of retail meat buyers from Korea recently visited the United States to see how the U.S. pork and beef industries can help fill this need. The team included representatives from three of Korea’s largest retail chains: Emart, Homeplus and Lottemart.

For a firsthand look at U.S. soybean and corn production, the group toured the Claremont, Minnesota, farm of U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) Chair-elect Bruce Schmoll. Based on this visit, USMEF Korea Director Jihae (pronounced JEE-HAY) Yang explains that the team came away very impressed with the scale and efficiency of U.S. grain production. Schmoll also offers his thoughts on the importance of U.S. producers showcasing their operations for international meat buyers, which he and his wife, Tarrie, have done on several occasions.

While in Minnesota, the team also received a tour and product sampling at the Hormel Foods plant in Austin and visited several retail outlets. Their next stop was Colorado, where they made additional retail visits and attended a seminar and product sampling conducted by Chef Jay McCarthy. See a full report and video on the team’s activities online. .


TRANSCRIPT:

Joe Schuele: Home meal replacement is one of the hottest trends among South Korean consumers, and a team of retail meat buyers from Korea recently visited the United States to see what the U.S. beef and pork industries could do to fill this need. One of the highlights of their trip was a visit to the Minnesota farm of U.S. Meat Export Federation Chair Elect Bruce Schmoll. USMEF Korea Director Jihae Yang has more details in this USMEF report.

Jihae Yang: USMEF Korea invited the Korea retailers to Mr. Bruce Schmoll’s farm so they could learn about how corn and soybeans are raised. Usually, Korean farms are very tiny and require a lot of labor, manually done. They were just amazed and impressed by the scale of the industry, and they realized why U.S. beef and pork has the price competitiveness and the quality competitiveness.

Joe Schuele: Schmoll explains why he feels it’s important for U.S. producers to showcase their operations for foreign meat buyers.

Bruce Schmoll: My wife and I, Tarrie, we farm approximately 1,000 acres in Dodge County, in southeastern Minnesota – basically 50-50 corn and soybeans. We’ve hosted, actually, quite a few international trade teams, from soybeans to beef, pork producers. Today we have the South Koreans here looking at home meal replacement type food products. I think at first glance you would be hard-pressed to understand what is the value for a corn and soybean producer, but when you connect all the dots you see that our profitability as corn and soybean producers relies on the success of the red meat industry in our area. And to be able to take that to the next step, and to be able to export and find new markets internationally, it only adds to our bottom line.

Joe Schuele: For more on this and other trade issues, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.