North Dakota edible bean farmer hosts international visitors to his farm

Building international connections is an important aspect of the agricultural industry.

This year, farmer

Rudy Dotzenrod

hosted visitors from the Big Iron International Visitors Program to his farm to showcase his crops and Reinke irrigation systems.

“They were looking for a place to kind of showcase some of their swing-arm technology at the end of their pivots,” Dotzenrod said. “I’ve got a couple of them here, so they wanted to come.”

There were visitors from all of the world, including Turkey, Guatemala and Africa.

“We bring in anywhere from 50 to 150 international visitors every year,” said Lindsey Warner, deputy director of the North Dakota Trade Office. “The goal of that is, first and foremost, have agriculture machinery buyers learn more about North Dakota, our agriculture, our agriculture practices, the machinery that’s manufactured here.”

They got to see every part of the farming operation.

“I took a lot of them, and we walked around the farm, we went to different buildings and we looked at all sorts of different kinds of machinery, you know, from getting the ground ready, to planting, to spraying it, to harvesting it, just kind of looked at everything,” Dotzenrod said.

With Dotzenrod also being a black bean grower, that was beneficial to the visitors from Guatemala.

“They were very interested in irrigation and black beans,” Warner said.

However, most were interested in his corn production.

“I was kind of surprised, I thought there may be a few more questions on edible beans, but it was mostly in corn,” Dotzenrod said.

Bringing international visitors directly onto the farm is a big part of the tour.

“We live in a global world. A lot of the commodities that are produced within our state are exported outside of the U.S., so I think it’s really beneficial for people to see where their food is coming from, whether they are North Dakotas or they are international consumers of these products” Warner said.

“People kind of want to know where their food is coming from, you know, and if they can try and put a face on that or an environment, that gives them a better understanding of where it’s at,” Dotzenrod said. “A lot of this is beyond the economics of it. It’s relationship based. If they feel like they’re buying something from somebody they like, I think it makes it a lot easier for them to go ahead and do that.”