From Western Sussex to Eastern Asia

Rick Dickerson poses in front of his Route 13 farm stand. 

Dickerson recently returned from an economic development 

mission to China and Vietnam to build business for the American 

Soybean Market. He was selected from hundreds of applicants 

to take the trip. Photo by Tony Russo

“The first thing they tried to feed me was jellyfish.” 

Rick Dickerson is a Laurel farmer and doesn’t eat much jellyfish when he’s not in China. But he’s a good guest and as adventurous a traveler as he can bring himself to be, so he tried the delicacy. As it turned out, it wasn’t his favorite but it didn’t kill him either. 

“I tried to try it all,” he said of all the exotic food he encountered on his whirlwind week-abroad tour.

Dickerson both was and wasn’t in the country to try the jellyfish. He was one of ten farmers nationwide selected under a partnership with the USDA and the United Soybean Board (USB) to undertake a trade mission to China and Vietnam. The notion behind a trade mission is to solidify older relationships and cultivate new ones. Both of those duties require a bit of cultural immersion. Food is obviously a big part of that. So Dickerson was a good guest, although he admitted to loading up at the continental breakfast in case there was more jellyfish than chicken on the day’s menu. But as he said, it was by no means a vacation.

Dickerson spent 12 to 15-hour days visiting different agricultural sites around the country. There was an amount of soy, but that wasn’t really what he was there to see. Much of the trip focused on being able to meet the consumers.

According to USB, a full 25 percent of the soybeans that are grown here are used in China. Dickerson said the Chinese grow soy but not nearly as much as they consume. Also, it requires more space than they have. Most places he went to visit, people were interested to speak with him and grateful for his work.

“It’s a big deal to meet the people who grow the food, there,” he said.

It is something almost expected in a country with vast open air markets selling fresh food every day. The experience of going through one of these fascinated him in juxtaposition to the food processing centers he visited.

At a fish farm that employed about 800 people filleting fishes in shifts, there was, he said, a sense of extreme safety and quality control. Being 6’5” and approaching 300 pounds, it was always a challenge to Dickerson to find safety equipment that fit, but it was often a requirement.

Out in the market, chickens for sale were displayed out of refrigeration for purchase on the street which, for a guy from Delmarva, is at least a little mindblowing; especially given the heat.

It is summer in Beijing as it is here, except hotter. The temperature recorded during his stay, he said, hovered around 100 with a heat index that often approached 120 degrees. It’s the kind of weather that will put you off sun-cured chicken.

From China the contingent went to Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City to continue the tour. If China was the “old” relationship being serviced, Vietnam was the promising new market the growers hoped to better cultivate. It was no mistake that they visited them in succession. 

According to a release by USB the trip also helped the U.S. farmers see the potential in Vietnam up close.

“This year’s program was especially unique because our participants were able to see a well-established market in China, as well as a market that [USB] is working to develop in Vietnam,” said Keith Tapp a Kentucky soybean farmer and USB Audit and Evaluation Committee chairman.

Culturally, the food was much more familiar to Dickerson and he was fascinated by Ho Chi Minh City. 

“There were 6.5 million people and 4.5 million scooters,” he said. 

The mission wasn’t to strike deals, so much as to get a sense of the kinds of things that happen to the soy once it leaves the U.S.

Dickerson was particularly impressed by the size and efficiency of the Cai Mep agricultural port, which handles nearly half of all the soybean imports. 

Vietnam uses a lot of soy for livestock feed and as its middle class emerges, the hope is they will continue to need more of it. 

This story originally appeared in the Sept. 3 edition of the Laurel Star.