KDSN RADIO News
Reynolds says trade mission to spark more exchanges between Iowa and India
Governor Kim Reynolds spent about a third of the month of September on a trade mission in India. Reynolds says the groundwork for her meetings was laid decades ago by the Iowa native who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his research that improved wheat and rice yields.
“It really was an opportunity to continue to build relationships that started 60 years ago with Dr. Norman Borlaug,” Reynolds says. “They loved the history. They loved the partnership and how we worked together to transform their economy and save over a billion lives.”
Borlaug took a wheat variety he’d developed to India in the mid-1960s and increased wheat production there by 60%. “We spent a lot of time talking about how we can take that next step and continue to feed and fuel the world together,” Reynolds says, “so we look forward to going back, we’ve invited them to bring a delegation to the state of Iowa and then we’ll look forward to building those relationships.”
Reynolds met with India’s Secretary of Agriculture as well as the country’s Minister for Food Processing and Minister of Commerce. Iowa Corn Growers President Stu Swanson says a memorandum of agreement was signed to promote discussions between Iowa’s and India’s feed sectors.
“They’ll send people from India to Iowa. We’ll continue to send people from Iowa to India to understand how the feed industry can work together,” Swanson says.
An Iowa-based start-up company called “Power Pollen” also signed a letter of agreement with an Indian company called V-R-N Seed that does business in the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Power Pollen, which is based in Ames, has developed a process for collecting pollen, storing it, and then applying it to fields to increase production of rice, wheat, and corn seeds.
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