(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig is back from a trade trip with the governor and business leaders to India. “Met with folks who could be customers of ours in India in terms of importing, food and agriculture products, but also had a chance to brag on Iowa a little bit and talk about what it’s like to do business here, and try to recruit some folks who may want to put a footprint in or make an investment in the state,” he says. Naig says India has a lot of potential.

“The largest country by population, over one-point-four billion people,” Naig says, “and from a food and agriculture standpoint, there are so many things that they need in order to meet that demand. They’ve got a rising middle class, a middle class that will exceed 500 million people.” Naig says there are some key Iowa products that could fill the void there. “We think that there’s tremendous opportunity for us to supply feed to their livestock sector. They’re also looking to improve and increase the amount of ethanol that they’re blending into their fuel. And so ethanol is a very, very real possibility for us to have significant exports to that country,” he says.

Mike Naig (Iowa PBS photo)

Naig says feed and ethanol are just a couple of the items that could be exported. “There are just opportunities abounding there for the things that we produce and have so much in abundance here in the state of Iowa,” Naig says. Naig says they did sign two memorandums of understanding with India. “One with the sort of the livestock and feeding grain sector to explore ways that we can work together, and the other was with a research institute to look at ways that we can work together in terms of research on crop and renewable energy,” he says, “also, how do we prepare the next generation with the skill set that they need to take advantage of the types of technology that we have here in the United States.”

Naig says the trip is part of the effort to lay the groundwork for longer term trade. “I think what we want to do is be positioned to have an opportunity to enter that market and do so in a big way, but it’s going to take some time for that to develop,” he says.

Naig joined the governor, and directors of the Iowa Economic Development Authority and Iowa Finance Authority on the ten-day trip to India.