(Radio Iowa) – Officials from Taiwan have agreed to buy two-point-six billion dollars worth of U.S. corn, soybeans and dried distillers grain. Representatives of Iowa commodity groups joined Taiwan officials at the Iowa Capitol for a signing ceremony. Johnson Chiang is director general of the country’s Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago.

“We want to have more cooperation with Iowa in addition to purchasing agriculture products, but also I think we enough areas in high technologies because of Taiwan is also one of the leading contributors to the high technology supply chain.” Taiwan, for example, is the world’s largest supplier of computer chips. Taiwan has signed letters of intent to purchase one-and-a-half million metric tons of U.S. corn and up to two-point-nine metric tons of U.S. soybeans as well as by-products of corn and beans over the next two years.

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig says trade matters to Iowa. “As a leading exporter of food and agriculture products, we see great value in the type of commitment that you all signed today and that continues to build upon a relationship that we are maintaining and building throughout time.” Governor Kim Reynolds says Iowa exports to Taiwan have increased in the past five years and are on pace to be higher this year as well.

“Taiwan’s economic clout is substantial,” Reynolds says. “It’s the 12th largest purchaser of Iowa products, with a total of $304 million of (Iowa) goods sold in Taiwan last year.” The Taiwanese delegation is on a goodwill mission to the United States and has spent the past two days in Iowa. Chin-Chang Huang is the deputy minister of Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture. He was intrigued by Iowa State University programs on climate change and sustainable agriculture and plans to recommend his government establish agreements with I-S-U.

“And also send our people to study at Iowa State University,” he said. Taiwan’s first directly-elected president earned an agricultural economics degree from Iowa State in 1953. President Lee led Taiwan from 1988 until 2000.