WISHH Executive Director Jim Hershey visits Shujabad Agro crushing plant in Pakistan.

With the continued growth of U.S. soybean exports to Pakistan, the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) has taken on responsibility for trade and technical serving efforts targeting oilseed crushers, feed millers and the poultry industry. U.S. soy family efforts began in the 1990s, when Pakistan used minimal levels of soybean meal in their poultry rations and sourced what they did use primarily from India.

During the last five years, the American Soybean Association’s (ASA) World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH) built on the original work and expanded the commercial network for the U.S. soy value chain in Pakistan; one strategy has involved leveraging soybean farmer resources with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding from programs such as the FEEDing Pakistan aquaculture project.

Over the past 20 months, Pakistan has imported over 393,000 metric tons (MT) of whole soybeans and soybean meal from the United States, for an estimated value exceeding $140 million.

WISHH and USSEC are now executing a shift of programmatic responsibilities, and ensuring that adequate Fiscal Year 2017 funding is available to further develop U.S. soy markets in Pakistan. The FY 2017 initiatives include trade servicing and technical assistance as well as information exchanges on the large and complex Pakistan market.  USSEC will provide technical assistance to Pakistani buyers and crushers and support their participation in USSEC training and exchange activities.

As USSEC takes on the management of most market development activities, WISHH will complete the final year of the FEEDing Pakistan aquaculture program, which has built a market for soy-based floating fish feed and introduced tilapia to the commercial market. WISHH will continue to pursue similar, non-traditional funding in Pakistan (outside of the usual USDA/Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) funding streams of the Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) in close collaboration with USSEC.

“The progress in the Pakistan market shows that WISHH is a trailblazer for the U.S. soybean trade,” said WISHH Committee Chair Daryl Cates.

“We are proud to build on many years of U.S. soy activity in Pakistan,” added USSEC Chairman and American Soybean Association (ASA) Board Member Jim Miller.  “We look forward to taking on key programs in Pakistan to create further demand for U.S. soy by providing our full range of services to Pakistani Customers – these will include technical and trade servicing plus applicable market access work. We also look forward to collaborating with WISHH, which will be finishing out the fourth year of their Feeding Pakistan Aquaculture Project in fiscal 2017.”

WISHH is a trade-development program, headquartered at ASA in St. Louis. Since U.S. soybean farmers founded WISHH in 2000, it has worked in 24 countries to develop long-term markets for U.S. soybean farmers while fueling economic growth and value chain development.

USSEC aims to maximize the use of U.S. soy internationally by meeting the needs of global customers that use U.S. soy in human food and feed for poultry, livestock and fish. The organization uses a global network of stakeholder partnerships, including soybean farmers, exporters, agribusinesses, agricultural organizations, researchers and government agencies, to accomplish that mission. USSEC programs are partially funded by the United Soybean Board (USB) and by FAS funds provided by ASA.