A LEADING AG EXPORTER: Sweet potatoes, tobacco, pork and wood products form N.C.'s export building blocks.

AuthorBlake, Kathy
PositionSPONSORED SECTION: CASH CROP

For many of the products farmed in North Carolina, if it grows, it goes. The exporting of crops, forestry and animal products makes N.C. the 11th-largest overall U.S. exporter, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Each year, millions of dollars' worth of goods pass through the ports of Wilmington and Morehead City destined for places such as Great Britain, China, the Netherlands, Indonesia and Belgium.

The USDA reported N.C. agricultural exports worth more than $4.1 billion in 2014, an increase of more than 200% since 2005, and showed agriculture supported nearly 1.3 million jobs statewide in farming, food processing, transportation and storage.

Tobacco and sweet potatoes are top crops. As of October, the state had exported more than $566 million in tobacco in 2018, with China and Mexico as the leading partner countries, followed by Indonesia, Switzerland and Italy.

North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission data lists N.C. as the top-producing sweet potato state since 1971, with more than half the national supply. North Carolina harvested nearly 95,000 acres of the vegetable in 2016, according to the USDA.

As of last October, the state had exported $132.3 million worth of sweet potatoes to more than two dozen countries in 2018, outpacing the amount from the previous year by nearly $7 million. The United Kingdom tops the list with more than $54 million spent on N.C. sweet potatoes in the first 10 months of 2018, followed by the Netherlands at $31.9 million.

"You see a specific country in Europe, but then there is border trade. You see a huge amount going to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, but that is because there is a port," says Michelle Wang, an international market specialist with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. "Half of that might then be exported out of that country to Germany or Sweden."

Canada, Mexico and South America also haul in N.C. sweet potatoes and, in 2016, Singapore joined the list.

China is the biggest trade partner for forest products, which in 2017 accounted for a total international export value of $1.6 billion and ranked in the top five commodities for both N.C. ports, according to the NCDA&CS' Clay Altizer, an international marketing specialist.

Sixty percent of the state is covered by timberland, according to the N.C. Forestry Association, at 18.1 million acres. Eighty-five percent is privately owned, with 21 % controlled by industrial landowners. Forest products are...

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