USA Rice Hosts Rice Country Tour For Cochran Fellows From Central America
By Sarah Moran
USA Rice
Last month USA Rice received funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cochran Fellowship Program (CFP) to host Central American rice industry professionals on a tour through rice growing regions in the mid-south. The primary goals of the CFP, named after the late U.S. Senator William Thad Cochran from Mississippi, are to aid in developing agricultural systems in the Fellows’ home countries and to strengthen and enhance agriculture trade linkages with the United States.
USA Rice recently met with another group of Cochran Fellows from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana who were in Washington, DC, on a similar training trip (see USA Rice Daily, September 26, 2022).
The Central American delegation consisted of rice industry professionals from Honduras and Guatemala who traveled through Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Washington, DC, to gain perspective on U.S. rice quality and marketing. USA Rice members conducted in-depth tours of their farms to demonstrate the rice production cycle, ratoon crops, and U.S. rice’s unique sustainability story. The Fellows also received behind the scenes tours of mills, laboratories, research stations, ports, and grain terminals.
Special events included a jambalaya lunch with Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins at the Louisiana State University Rice Research Station and a boat ride down the Arkansas River giving the Fellows an up-close perspective on the logistical advantage of U.S. rice over other origins. They also learned about the symbiotic relationship between waterfowl and rice fields at the Ducks Unlimited headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee.
The tour concluded in the nation’s capital with a ceremony of completion by USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Daniel Whitley at USDA headquarters. Whitley congratulated the Fellows on completing the program and gave an inspiring address emphasizing how they are the future leaders that will use their voices to spread sound science and influence policy in their home countries and beyond.
“This Fellows group came away with increased knowledge about U.S. rice varieties, production, and a whole list of new contacts from the U.S. rice industry,” said Asiha Grigsby, USA Rice director of international promotion for the western hemisphere who accompanied the Fellows. “There was a lot of interest in parboiled rice, and many of these importers and millers already purchase U.S. milled rice, expressing their preference for U.S. logistics. We’ve invited them to the USA Rice Outlook Conference in Austin, Texas, and hope to see them there in December.”