Summer fellow program

Wheat Marketing Center

Two loaves of fresh-baked bread were displayed on a table inside the Wheat Marketing Center.

One loaf was noticeably smaller than the other. After the AgBiz Summer Fellows sampled bread from each loaf, they unanimously agreed the larger loaf was superior.

The center’s mission is to promote U.S. wheat by demonstrating its quality and functionality, growing markets for American grain farmers. Six of seven classes of wheat raised in the U.S. are exported out of Portland.

The larger loaf in the demonstration was made using hard red spring wheat, known for its chewy texture and gluten strength, which allows bread dough to better capture gases produced in proofing and rise. The smaller loaf comprised soft white wheat, which has a softer texture with weaker gluten and is most fitting for cakes, crackers, cookies and Asian-style noodles.

“Each class has specific quality characteristics to it, and those quality characteristics lend that class to performing better in certain products over other products,” explained Jayne Bock, the center’s technical director.

The center offers technical training for customers, workshops to educate growers about the importance of wheat quality, research and product development and crop quality testing services. A team from Korea visited the center June 9-13 to compare baking products using U.S. wheat blends for comparison against control flour from their usual suppliers. The center has small-scale production lines for making bread, tortillas and noodles.

“By having them come and do all the testing, they can see we’re not doing anything to tip the scale in favor of U.S. wheat,” Bock said. “They did prefer the U.S. wheat blends. It should lead to continued sales of U.S. wheat.”

A team from China was in Portland June 16-20 to take a workshop about the strategy for setting contract specifications for wheat purchases, called “Contracting for Wheat Value.”

The center, which was founded in 1988, is primarily funded with contributions from eight member states – Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska and Oklahoma. U.S. Wheat Associates provides additional funding.

The center’s largest research project entails producing an annual crop quality survey, which informs buyers how the current crop compares with wheat from the prior year, helping them adjust their processes, plan their buying strategies and maintain consistency. Idaho, Washington and Oregon fund the soft white wheat quality survey. In the 2024-2025 marketing year, soft white exports had a $1.21 billion economic impact on the Pacific Northwest, including a $400 million impact on Idaho, according to U.S. Wheat Associates.

The center is working to popularize a new and more accurate test to assess grain for sprout damage, replacing the longstanding falling number test. The center provides quality analysis for the National Wheat Foundation’s annual National Wheat Yield Contest, with the goal of demonstrating that yield and quality can go hand in hand. The center also has a subsidiary, called WMC Lab Services, that aids companies with proprietary work in product development, formulation and manufacturing processes.

“We try to represent all of the wheat exported from the U.S., regardless of destination or point of origin,” said Mike Moran, the center’s general manager.

U.S. Wheat Associates

The sun never sets on U.S. wheat thanks to U.S. Wheat Associates (USW). The organization, tasked with export market development for the U.S. wheat industry, employs 60 workers globally covering every time zone.

Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, USW has a satellite office in Portland. The organization brings in clients from throughout the world and educates them about contracting in the U.S. A USW trade team seeks to address trade barriers affecting access to foreign markets.

USW targets markets that value quality rather than simply seeking the lowest price, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.

“We are not always the most competitive as far as being the cheapest, so we have to focus on the value,” Luke Muller, assistant director of the USW West Coast Office, explained to the AgBiz Summer Fellows. “Our job is not to push the cheapest wheat but to enhance the profitability of U.S. wheat for our producers.”

USW gets 30% of its funding from state wheat commissions and 70% of its funding from U.S. Department of Agriculture grants.

Port of Portland

The Port of Portland is the region’s largest landowner and its economic engine, operating three marine terminals, three airports and six business parks. The terminals alone support 7,800 jobs, using truck, barge, ship and rail transportation to move commodities.

“We buy a lot of land and develop it,” said John Akre, the port’s director of maritime operations and marketing. “We help the local economy develop jobs and create a tax base.”

Each year, 2-4 million tons of grain are shipped through Portland to other countries. Hay, however, is the port’s top export commodity.

“The lower Columbia River is one of the major gateways for wheat leaving the nation, and a lot of that is proximity of the barge system and the rail system,” Akre said.

The AgBiz Summer Fellows visited the port at a time of uncertainty due to federal trade policy. In the spring, the federal government announced sweeping tariffs on imports from global trade partners, including a 145% tariff on all Chinese imports to the U.S. Tariff rates have come down since then, with the tariff on Chinese goods at just over 50% as of June.

Officials with the Port of Portland initially anticipated retaliatory tariffs would result in shipping volume declines of roughly 20%. The reductions haven’t materialized, as new markets have been found for U.S. commodities.

“We’re starting to get actual numbers in, and for the grain side we’re actually up from previous years,” Akre said. “On mineral bulks, we’re even if not positive, but we’re down about 15% on our container business.”

The reduction in the container business resulted from the world’s largest container shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Co., pulling services on the west coast as a result of the tariff situation. The other major concern for Akre and his colleagues was a proposal to implement a fee of up to $1 million per U.S. port call on Chinese vessel operators and a $1.5 million fee per U.S. port call on Chinese-built vessels. The provision threatened to reduce availability of vessels for hauling commodities and goods from U.S. ports.

“They are working on revising that,” Akre said.

Columbia Grain

Boats and barges represent cost-effective and consistent ways to ship commodities long distances.

“Anything on water is cheap,” explained Ryan Statz, a Columbia Grain trader. “When we ship grain it’s double to go from North Dakota to Portland as it is from Portland to Japan per bushel.”

Columbia Grain estimates 85% of the commodities that it moves arrive by rail, including soft white wheat from Idaho. Another 12% of cargo arrives by barge and 3% of cargo is trucked to the company’s Portland terminal, which has a capacity of 5.2 million bushels of storage. Wheat represents 55% of the company’s export volume and 45% of its revenue. Columbia Grain is also the nation’s largest exporter of pulse crops, shipping 30% of U.S. pulses. Idaho is a major producer of pulse crops, including chickpeas, lentils and dry beans.

The company is vertically integrated, operating assets such as grain elevators, processing plants and agronomy centers throughout the northern U.S. The company has forged partnerships with more than 8,000 farmers to meet customers’ demands.

United Grain

At its Port of Portland terminal, United Grain Corp. employs a strategy of blending grain from several silos segregated based on quality considerations to meet customer specifications to the tenth of a percentage.

Grain exports must meet stringent standards for several milling attributes such as protein content, moisture percentage, test weight, damaged kernels and falling number.

“The name of the game is buying No. 2 grade and selling it as No. 1 grade,” explained Mike Dorey, United Grain production manager. “Every shipment is verified and if a load fails to meet standards it is loaded back into grain elevators and re-blended.”

Logistics is the company’s other major challenge, involving scheduling ships, rail cars and barges at precisely the right time to minimize freight costs.

United Grain has the largest grain elevator facility on the west coast, with the capacity to store 8.3 million bushels. The facility unloads 437 rail cars carrying 11.3 billion pounds of grain per year, with barges bringing in another 1.9 billion pounds.

United Grain has 19 facilities that feed commodities into the Port of Portland. China and the Middle East have been the top markets for the company’s grain. United Grain has maintained its shipping volume by increasing its business with Brazil, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines. While the U of I-led group was touring the facility, for example, the company was filling a boat bound for the Philippines with 126 million pounds of northern spring, hard red winter and soft white wheat.

“We expanded our customer base into markets we normally don’t ship to, and our merchandizing team has done a great job of showing them the quality of the product we put out there and that we do have the infrastructure to handle all of that,” Dorey said.

Nicole Xiao

• Year in school: Senior
• Hometown: Moscow
• School: Columbia University
• Major: Climate Systems Science

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I think this program does a really interesting job of looking at risk management in commodities and agriculture markets. I’m interested in potentially looking at how climate change or environmental changes have impacted agriculture markets, and how risk management factors into some agricultural import and export markets. It’s been a wonderful experience.

What was your favorite part of the experience? I’ve enjoyed going into a variety of producers and suppliers and learning about the supply chain in regards to the commodity farm gate. I think that there’s not an inherent climate focus but it relates in general. Going to United Grain they were talking about how climate does impact some of their import and export markets.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? I’m looking to write an article or participate in a publication that would be around how environmental changes are impacting agriculture markets and price forecasting and outlook. I would love for us to do something related to Idaho farmers and the agricultural market in Idaho to help farmers understand how environmental changes are going to impact their own price forecasting of their commodities.

Libby Blattner

• Year in school: Junior
• Hometown: Kuna
• School: University of Idaho
• Major: Agricultural Economics

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I have been struggling a little bit to decide what I want to do in the future with my agricultural economics degree, and I did an internship last summer with the Canyon County Fair in Caldwell. I was looking for something that was a little more economics focused, and I wanted to get a little more real-world experience within my major. I felt like this would be a great opportunity to explore some of the different avenues I can pursue through my major after graduation. I also added an international agriculture minor this year and I was really interested to see the international focuses on the imports and exports and seeing how all of the countries work together to supply our world with food.

What was your favorite part of the experience? I grew up on a sheep ranch in Kuna, so I’ve always been tied to the industry. Yet it’s been very eye opening to see how little I actually knew. I’d never toured a grain elevator before. It’s been interesting to explore the various facets of our industry that contribute to an efficient supply chain and gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? My family owns a small-acreage farm in Kuna, running a lot of the same commodities we’ve been learning about through this program. To that effect, my father has been asking every single day if I can help strategize a hedging plan for our commodities to secure a more favorable price for the commodities we market.

Connor Wells

• Year in school: Graduated in May 2025
• Hometown: Meridian
• School: University of Idaho
• Major: Agricultural Economics

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? Just learning an overall view of wheat and the other commodities that are exported through here. With the risk management program specifically, it’s a lot of numbers and it doesn’t give you a whole overview of everything. This helps me understand what I’m doing.

What was your favorite part of the experience? We’ve seen a lot of interesting places I didn’t know about. Also the way it’s constrained to one area — you really get to know the Columbia River system.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? It helps me to care about every part of the system when I see it as a whole. I’m going to go to graduate school at University of California, Davis for a master’s in agricultural economics, so it gives me more ideas and inspiration about specific things I can research related to the industry.

Gabbi Tassinari

• Year in school: Junior
• Hometown: Portland, Oregon
• School: Boise State University
• Major: Business Finance, Minor in Finance

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I chose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program because I wanted to build my understanding of agricultural commodities and risk management, areas I hadn’t had much exposure to before. I saw it as a valuable opportunity to gain more research experience, as well as network and learn directly from industry professionals.

What was your favorite part of the experience? My favorite part of the experience was getting to see the entire process — from farm to consumer. I found it fascinating to follow how commodities move through each stage of the supply chain and how each decision along the way impacts the final product.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? This program has given me a stronger understanding of how risk management, supply chain decisions, and market trends impact agricultural operations. I hope to apply what I’ve learned through research that supports producers in making more informed, data-driven decisions to reduce risk and improve profitability.

Josiah Knapp

• Year in school: Junior
• Hometown: Hagerman
• School: University of Idaho
• Major: Agricultural Education; Minor in Agricultural Business

How did you learn about the program? Some of the faculty who are mentors talked about the program some in various classes, but the real thing that got me into it was I was scrolling on LinkedIn one day and Brett Wilder, who is a faculty member, had posted about it, and I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do that,’ so I applied.

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I want to teach and one of the areas I really want to teach about is economics, the supply chains and things like that. This is really developing an understanding so one day I can teach.

What was your favorite part of the experience? When we went to the Wheat Marketing Center, it was really cool to understand their main job was just to try to get people to buy U.S. wheat.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? To have an understanding of what resources are out there for my future students, whatever they might be doing, or even myself, I think it’s pretty valuable to understand what resources you have available.

Samantha Pixton

• Hometown: Twin Falls
• School: College of Southern Idaho
• Major: Agribusiness

How did you learn about the program? I have a great faculty in the ag department at CSI and we have a student hub everyone signs up for on our Canvas page. They post internships, jobs and anything that has to do with agriculture, so I saw it and clicked on it and thought, ‘Oh this sounds interesting.’

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I am in ag business so a huge part of that is understanding wheat markets. Everything about this is going into commodity markets and ag commodity risk management, and I feel like being in ag business and being in the industry, that is a huge part of what farmers have to deal with.

What was your favorite part of the experience? Being able to learn even deeper about the effects and market trend and things is very helpful.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? Farmers, Ranchers and people in agriculture are really good about collecting data. They have the charts, they have the pictures, but they are not as well equipped to read the data and understand how to change things, especially with markets and hedging, so to be able to have more of a specialization in that can be really important to farmers and ranchers so they have people on their side.

Corinne Bernards

• Year in school: Junior
• Hometown: Sacramento, California
• School: Brigham Young University-Idaho
• Major: Economics; Minor in Data Science

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? I have no experience in agriculture, so this was a taste test to see if this was my style of what I want to go for.

What was your favorite part of the experience? I have learned a lot and there is a lot of opportunity in agriculture. I’m not quite sure yet, but I think it’s a good place for me to be.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? I’ve got a handful of ideas for things I might want to research. Any time we talk to farmers and industry people, they’ll bring up big issues they’re facing — experimenting with their crops, tariffs, trying to be more sustainable farmers — there are all of these hot topics that they talk about and researching and analyzing data to help them solve those problems I think would be really important.

Madison Weber

• Year in school: Junior
• Hometown: Pullman, Washington
• School: University of Idaho
• Major: Agricultural Education

How did you learn about the program? I had seen posters about it around and was encouraged to do it.

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? Studying agricultural education you can take it on different paths. I think it’s helped me to determine if economics is something I’m interested in and if I want to go down the economics road instead of education.

What was your favorite part of the experience? I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about economics because I’ve taken many classes but this has helped apply what I’m learning.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? I feel like I’ve made a lot of connections with people — people I can connect with for future internships, or if I were looking for a job, or if I wanted to reach out to someone as a guest speaker in my classes as a teacher, or references.

Mackenzie Malson

• Year in school: Senior
• Hometown: Fruitland
• School: Kansas State University

Major: Agricultural Economics and Global Food Systems Leadership; Minors in International Agriculture and Communications and Education for Agriculture

How did you learn about the program? I’m a transfer student from U of I, so I followed the program on social media. I was also part of Kansas State’s Risk Management Fellows this year, and our professor shared U of I Professor Xiaoli Etienne’s post.

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program, and how has it advanced your career goals? I was looking for an opportunity to be in Idaho for the summer and continue to learn about risk management. This program has given me hands-on research experience in risk management through researching Whole Farm Revenue Protection, as well as experiential learning through all of our sessions and the Portland trip.

What was your favorite part of the experience? I’m interested in attending graduate school and working in Extension, so I feel this program really aligns well with exploring that future career option, as well as all of the tours have really brought to light our sessions from this program, as well as courses that I’ve taken in school. Now I get to go out and apply those things.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? I really have enjoyed learning about what drives the market and market trends, and how that affects risk management for farmers. I hope to directly report and research the market for specific commodities and produce materials that would directly help support farmers in their risk management tactics.

Sayra Agustin Zarate

• Year in school: Sophomore
• Hometown: Madera, California
• School: California State University-Fresno
• Major: Agricultural Business; Minor in Animal Science

How did you learn about the program? I was searching for internships and scholarships that are ag related. This was one of the top ones that popped up.

Why did you choose to participate in the AgBiz Summer Fellows program and how has it advanced your career goals? Coming from a nonfarming background, for me it’s really important to know what’s going on the agriculture industry, especially as someone who wants to enter that career. I think it’s important to know agriculture and all aspects of it.

What was your favorite part of the experience? In this internship we have learned so much about grain and railroads and boats. I hope one day I can apply what I have learned and put that into my farm. I am wanting to do something targeted more toward a younger audience. I want to have a you-pick type of farm, also with livestock and a petting zoo. I want to learn a little bit about everything that agriculture has.

How might you apply what you’ve learned through the course to benefit agriculture? I feel like I would use the opportunity to teach younger students or guests at my farm a little more of corn, feed and anything that has to do with my crops, too. We have been learning about crops, so I would like to make this a learning moment for guests on my farm.