Oregon is the only state in the U.S. allowed to export fresh blueberries to South Korea. In October, Governor Kate Brown led a trad mission which included an agriculture delegation to boost exports of Oregon blueberries and other agriculture and food products to South Korea and Japan.
Lynn Howlett
Last month, Oregon Governor Kate Brown led a nearly two-week-long trade mission to South Korea and Japan to promote agriculture and other top Oregon industries.
According to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Japan and South Korea are the state’s second and third largest export markets for food and agriculture products.
Theresa Yoshioka, the international trade manager for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, organized an agriculture delegation that accompanied Governor Brown on the trip and conducted meetings and site visits with trade officials and businesses that sell Oregon jams, wine, fresh blueberries and other products in South Korea and Japan.
While the pandemic has forced many trade meetings to take place via Zoom or other electronic means, Yoshioka thinks it was particularly important for state officials and industry partners to meet in person with their Asian counterparts.
“Especially in Japan and Korea … relationships are important for business. And meeting in person is important for continuing those relationships and building new ones,” she said.
Last year, South Korea and Japan generated $600 million in export sales of Oregon agriculture and food products.
Oregon is also the only state in the U.S. allowed to export fresh blueberries to South Korea. Oregon gained entry to that market 11 years ago after “a lot of hard work” by state agriculture officials, according to Ellie Norris, the vice-chair of the Oregon Blueberry Commission.
“In Oregon, we’re very lucky where we live in a very open, natural space that we don’t need to use a lot of heavy chemicals and we don’t have a lot of pest pressures that the Korean government wants to keep out,” Norris said.
Norris is also the owner of Norris Farms, a 650-acre blueberry farm in Umpqua. She said about 25 percent of her harvest gets exported to markets in the United Kingdom, South America and Asia. It can take as little as three days, according to Norris, for blueberries picked from her farm to end up on supermarket shelves in Japan and South Korea.
For Norris, the trip was also an opportunity to find ways to boost sales by becoming more culturally aware of how customers in those markets think of and enjoy “a luxury fruit.”
“So if they buy these small quantities of blueberries, they want to make a beautiful cake with them, a beautiful dessert. They want to showcase it,” Norris said.
“So that is my next task, is to go see what we could do to help expand their knowledge on how to just eat raw blueberries.”
Oregon is also the nation’s top producer of frozen blackberries, marionberries and black raspberries. But the state’s frozen berry producers are not currently allowed access to the Korean market. Yoshioka hopes that will change due to the first in-person trade mission made by Oregon officials to Asia in three years.
Ellie Norris and Theresa Yoshioka spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation: