Tennessee Trade Mission to Mexico Beefs Up International Connections
In partnership with: Tennessee Department of Agriculture
In October of 2022, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) and beef producers headed south to Chihuahua, Mexico, on a trade mission to strengthen the beef genetics export industry. “We’ve all got the same goals – to produce the best protein product in the world,” says Patterson Freeman, an Angus cattle producer from Tennessee.
Freeman, the farm manager of McWherter Farms in Dresden, along with Christina Greer, international marketing business consultant for TDA, took part in the trade mission.
Others in attendance included cattle producers and representatives from Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Idaho and New Mexico.
Meat of the Matter
This was not a tourist excursion. Organized in partnership with U.S. Livestock Genetics Export Inc., the trip was an outbound mission designed to strengthen genetic exports to the Mexican beef industry.
What does it mean to export genetics? Cattlemen, like Freeman, breed and raise purebred cattle, in which breeders intentionally blend desirable genetic traits to sell bulls, heifers, frozen embryos and frozen semen to help other ranchers produce excellent beef for their consumers. Strengthening exports means expanding opportunities to send those genetic products to other countries.
To that end, Freeman, Greer and the others toured Chihuahuan cattle ranches, attended the large cattle exposition called Expogan Chihuahua, networked with Mexican producers and – perhaps most importantly – learned and shared knowledge.
For Greer, this is the start of further defining Tennessee’s marketing strategy for exporting cattle genetics.
“It was a valuable learning opportunity,” she says. “Now, I can take all these different pieces of knowledge and better serve producers back in Tennessee.”
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Building Relationships on Common Ground
At Expogan, Freeman got to see the influence of both U.S. and Argentinian genetics on display. He says that for a lot of the cows in the shows, he had seen their U.S. sires in person back in the U.S. – a fact that impressed his Mexican counterparts.
He also learned what cattlemen have in common regardless of country. The visitors spent two days touring facilities, including the Complejo Ganadero Las Palomas, a reproductive research center owned by the Chihuahua Cattle Union. Although the technology in use lags slightly behind the U.S., Freeman says he learned that “cowboys are cowboys. We all kind of manage cows the same way.”
As the group continued to tour several large ranches – 15,000 to 20,000 acres each – the Chihuahuan farmers enthusiastically sought advice and opinions from their guests about how to improve. While the questions and answers required translating, their passion, skill and hospitality needed none.
“You could tell the barns were freshly painted at one of the places we went to,” Freeman says. “They thought enough of us coming that they had really spruced things up.”
And in Chihuahua’s diverse terrain, from green range lands to mesquite brush, Freeman witnessed how the different farmers tended their herds.
“They may not have access to the same technology we use, but they know what their cattle need to fit their area, market and geography to make those cattle profitable,” Freeman says.
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A Promising Future
Greer hopes to make the trip again when she can bring more producers from the Volunteer State.
“We want to continue to explore the Mexican market,” she says. “We want to continue these inbound and outbound trade missions. We are confident that Tennessee will do well in Mexico because we have what they’re looking for.”