(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.

(Radio Iowa) – The emerald ash borer (EAB) has now been discovered in all but six of Iowa’s 99 counties.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture has confirmed that Mitchell County is the 93rd county with an E-A-B infestation. Larvae were collected near Spring Park in rural Osage and federal identification confirmed them as the invasive insect. It is the ninth confirmed infestation this year.

The only counties now without an E-A-B infestation are Plymouth, Woodbury, Monona, Osceola, Emmett, and Palo Alto counties in western and northwest Iowa. The Ag Department says the invasive insect is a threat to native ash tree species — with the damage from the larva typically killing a tree within two to four years after infestation.

(Radio Iowa) – Northeast Iowa officials say a young farmer has died. A Farley man died in a farming accident on Saturday night. The Dubuque County Sheriff’s Office says it happened shortly before 9:30 north of Farley, at a residence there. Workers were unhooking a silage wagon when it started rolling backward. Twenty-five-year-old Austin Gaul got caught under the wheels and was run over.

(Radio Iowa) – A northwest Iowa woman has been offered a plea agreement in a case involving the deaths of over a thousand pigs at two hog confinements in Sac County in June. Thirty-four-year-old Elana Laber, of Early, was responsible for the care of the pigs. The company that owned the animals estimates it lost 150-thousand dollars due to the deaths of the pigs. Court records indicate Laber will plead guilty to one count of first-degree criminal mischief and one count of livestock neglect.

She faces up to 10 years in prison for the felony charge of criminal mischief charge. The sentence for animal neglect could be as long as a year. Her plea hearing is scheduled for next Monday, September 26.