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Agriculture Minister David Marit's trade and investment mission to Mexico last week was a success.
Marit along with members of Saskatchewan's Trade and Export Partnership travelled down for the Food Tech Summit and Expo in Mexico.
STEP and other members of the delegation hosted a booth at the event which attracts over 20,000 buyers, investors, and experts in the agri-food sector.
The booth showcased Saskatchewan as the destination of choice for agri-foods innovation and investment.
Marit also had a number of meetings with key buyers and potential buyers to talk about what Saskatchewan has to offer.
He met with officials from the largest bread maker in the world Bimbo and Trimex the largest grain miller in Mexico to reassure them about our sustainability and where our scientific base numbers are at.
"When we started telling them that Saskatchewan farmers grow canola 60 per cent better, and our carbon footprint is better than anybody else in the world. That's one of the stories we had to tell. The same thing with cereals. our carbon footprint for growing, durum wheat and spring wheat is 60 per cent better than any other jurisdiction in the world. And then yellow peas are more than 90 per cent better."
He notes that really got the attention of Trimex and Bimboe, so that was two very important meetings where they felt some opportunity.
They also met with the CEO of CPKC in Mexico City as well, where they talked about logistics and some opportunities there as well.
Marit also had discussions with one of Mexico's largest canola crush facilities and what they're looking at as far as some opportunities to expand there and what they are looking at.
He says they had some great meetings including with representatives involved in the livestock sector.
Marit points out that we always see a large delegation coming up from Mexico for Canadian Western Agribition.
"They really like our genetics in our beef industry here in Western Canada. They feel it's important to grow on that. Obviously, red and black Angus are big, but also Gelbvieh is becoming a big player as well. And they see that with their crossbreeding."
Another aspect of the trip was talking about what Saskatchewan had to offer on the mining side as far as rare earth elements, including copper, uranium, and potash.
The province has 23 of Canada's 31 minerals with the top three being potash, uranium, and helium.
Marit added that we see some huge opportunities there as well with some of these companies looking at expanding outside of Mexico.