The second panelist at the GBD event on September 26,
Maria Zieba
, is the Director for International Affairs at the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). The focus of the event was on Japan, and Ms. Zieba was emphatically clear about the importance of the new U.S.-Japan trade agreement to America’s pork producers. Here is more of what she said on that score:
A successful U.S. pork industry really needs market certainty, and we’re very, very, VERY happy to have this agreement with the Japanese that was announced yesterday at the U.N. Once implemented, this trade agreement will place us back on a level playing field with our international competitors into one of our most important export markets. J
apan is actually the largest purchaser by value of U.S. pork, and it is the second largest by volume.
We watched helplessly as we saw our competitors in the European Union and the CP-TPP countries as they took market share away from us through their trade agreements. So we are very happy that we have been able to level the playing field, and we look forward to the implementation of this agreement in the near future.
According to
Dr. Dermot Hayes
– he is an economist at the Iowa State University – he estimates that U.S. pork exports to Japan will grow from – last year they were $1.6 billion – to $2.2 billion in the next 15 years under this agreement.
Like others on the panel, Ms. Zieba talked about more than the improved access to the Japanese market that the new agreement promises. She painted a picture of the U.S. pork industry with the numbers. She talked about new
opportunities for U.S. pork producers in countries like Jamaica and Vietnam.
She reaffirmed the priority NPPC attaches to winning Congressional approval for the
USMCA
, the new NAFTA. And she talked about
China
. A transcript of her remarks is available on the GBD website. Here, we shall recap just a bit from the first and last of those four items.
U.S. Pork By the Numbers
. “Pork is the Number One meat protein consumed in the world,” Ms. Zieba said. Here are some of the figures she used to describe the U.S. contribution to that portion of the global food chain, i.e. pork.
60,000
— The number of pork producers across the United States represented by NPPC.
500,000
— The number of jobs provided by the U.S. pork industry throughout the U.S. economy.
100,000
the number of U.S. jobs directly related to pork exports.
5.3 billion pounds
— The volume of U.S. pork exported in 2018.
$6.4 billion
— The value of U.S. pork exports in 2018.
26 billion pounds
¬— The quantity “of safe and nutritious pork for consumers worldwide” provided annually by U.S. pork producers. As Ms. Zieba explained, the United States is the world leading exporter of pork.
