While the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees have both blasted proposed trade agreements, Iowa’s top ag official says trade is essential to agriculture and especially to Iowa agriculture. Iowa Ag Secretary Bill Northey says he’s concerned when he hears Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speak out against trade deals. Northey says the Pacific Trade Pact would be a boon to agriculture.

“TPP is another one of those, Trans Pacific Partnership, with a dozen of us around the Pacific Ocean that would be very beneficial to agriculture,” Northey says. “It’s very easy to come out opposed to those agreements and talk about the problems without appreciating the benefits.” Iowa is the top pork-producing state and Northey says the export of Iowa pork products is a great example of how agriculture benefits from world trade.

“We ship about a quarter of all our pork production overseas,” Northey says. “We’ll ship maybe the majority of some of the products like pork feet or pork hearts or other kinds of things, and we’ll keep those things we value, like pork chops and bacon.” Northey says many of Iowa’s key ag products are being shipped out of the country. “Excess of 40% of our soybeans are exported, a lot of those go to China,” Northey says. “It’s very important that we retain those markets. That’s true of distillers grain and that’s true of beef and corn exports. These are all very important and our markets would be severely impacted if we lost some of those markets.”

On Monday, Iowa entered into a partnership of memorandum of cooperation with India. Northey says India doesn’t constitute a major market for Iowa agricultural goods at the moment, but he believes with time, that will change. India has a growing population of 1.2 billion.

(Radio Iowa)