Traveling around the world for soybean farmers

By Dusty Sonnenberg, CCA, Field Leader, a project of the Ohio Soybean Council and Soybean Check-off

Soy product exports go into a variety of markets and locations that most Ohio farmers could never imagine. East Africa is the fastest-growing region for aquaculture on the African continent. Located immediately north of the equator, just above Lake Victoria in east-central Africa, Uganda is a landlocked country. It is not far from the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. It is not a place one would expect to find a soybean farmer from Ohio, but that is just where Chad Warner of Darke County recently traveled in order to attend an African aquaculture conference, World Aquaculture Safari ‘25, in Munyonyo, Kampala, Uganda. Warner is a member of the Ohio Soybean Council and traveled as a part of the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH), which is a program of the American Soybean Association.

“It was very interesting. There were farmers and feed millers, and basically everything to do with aquaculture was there,” Warner said.

The WISHH Farmer Sessions serve as a networking platform for farmer-to-farmer collaboration. The Farmer Sessions focus on applied knowledge to help farmers succeed in growing their business.

“In the breakout sessions, we worked with farmers on how to improve their individual operations,” Warner said. “The goal is to generate more demand for soy products.

“Uganda sits on Lake Victoria, which is the second-largest lake in the world. Unfortunately, they have continued to fish Lake Victoria almost to its extinction. It is not sustainable,” Warner said. “Now there is more of a push to do inland aquaculture. They have some aquaculture ponds and raceway systems for the inland aquaculture. They are providing food for the fish using soy in the diet as their protein source to make it more sustainable.”

Warner also traveled to Cambodia with WISHH.

“We went to Cambodia and participated in the closing ceremonies for the Cambodian project,” Warner said. “This was one of the first WISHH projects that was conducted. We were able to see what the aquaculture and poultry industry was prior to the start of the project, and then after the seven-year project was completed, measuring the impact of the project and how much demand it created for U.S. soy.

“WISHH goes into these countries, and they start the conversations,” Warner said. “They begin with training and teaching people all about soy. Everywhere I have traveled throughout the world, they all want U.S. soy. They know the benefits of it. We have the highest quality soybeans. In some cases, they are using our beans to blend with the South American product just to get the quality up.”

Logistics, supply chain, and financing are challenges worldwide.

“One big issue is the infrastructure and the supply chain limitations and getting our product to them,” Warner said. “That is a real challenge. For example, in Cambodia, everything has to go through Vietnam to get to Cambodia, so when you are selling to Vietnam, you may actually be selling to Cambodia and many other countries in that region. The good news is that we have people working through WISHH and U.S. Soy Export Council (USSEC) to help improve those supply chains to get our product to the people that want it.”

“It has been interesting to talk with the farmers in these other countries. They have a lot of the same conversations that U.S. farmers have when we get together,” Warner said. “One of the biggest challenges that I have heard about, especially in Africa, is the interest rates. A farmer cannot get a loan over there. If they do, the interest rates are 28% to 32%, so it is restricting their growth. That is basically why they are not growing.

“With our low prices in the United States, we have to start somewhere to help offset some of our losses, the losses that we’ve experienced here with the tariffs and the loss of China,” Warner said. “It is good to know that we have folks out there working for us to establish those markets.”