McGrath’s work abroad is to help U.S. ag producers

By: 
Jill Meier, Journal editor

Submitted photos 

Chase McGrath, a 2004 Brandon Valley High School graduate, is pictured on a crop trip in northeastern China to assess China’s corn crop in 2022.

 

Chase McGrath is pictured at an Independence Day event in Wuhan where he met with buyers of U.S. ag products.

 

When Chase McGrath graduated from Brandon Valley High School in 2004, little did he know that his career path would take him into the world of agriculture.

He was, after all, a “city” boy.

Like many teens, as he bid Brandon Valley High School ‘goodbye,’ “I basically said, ‘I’m leaving and never coming back.’”

That thought process first took him to Richmond University in London, where he intended to get his degree.

“I loved it. It’s very expensive and I changed course of what I wanted to do,” he said, which led to him transferring to Nebraska Wesleyen in Lincoln and a trio of majors.

During a summer break, he went to work on a buffalo ranch in Harding County, and that’s where he found his career passion: animal science. Following college, he scored an internship in Washington, D.C., where he worked on the Pakistan desk.

“I’ve always been interested in international affairs/international relations and I wanted to join the Foreign Service since the seventh grade,” he shares. “Then I found agriculture, and spent quite a few years after college feeling sort of driftless, because how do I pair these two things? People would laugh, you know, come on, like international and ag. Little did I know, there’s this whole world out there.”

Through his internship at the State Department, he met a man who worked for the USDA, and it was then he discovered the Foreign Agriculture Service, which is a small agency within the USDA. With offices in over 80 countries throughout the world, McGrath was bound for new destinations and experiences.

His current work is in Beijing, China, where he was assigned just over three years ago, pre-COVID. That, in itself, has been a journey of new experiences.

“I only left there two weeks ago today (Dec. 16), and what I hear is going on there now from friends and colleagues that are still there, I can’t even picture it. When I left weeks ago, we were still testing every day,” he explains. “You go to a booth and they swab you. You have to show a code on your phone to get into the grocery store or an Uber that you’re negative, and then it also is tracking where you go. So, if you were somewhere there was a positive case found, you would turn yellow, and you’d have to go home.”

Residents are then taken to a quarantine facility.

“Just to get into the airport, I had to go through all this screening just to get to the plane, and now I hear you don’t have to show an app to get in hardly anywhere there. We’ve been living like that for two-plus years. It’s bizarre, but you just get used to it.”

His current title is that of an agricultural attaché.

“Think of it as a diplomat,” he said. “It’s a title I’ve been dreaming of having for a very long time. Attaché is a diplomatic title from the old French system, but it really means I’m a subject matter expert to support the ambassador and his work wherever we are.’”

As an attaché for the FAS, his mandate is to open, maintain and grow markets for U.S. agricultural exports. “Our work takes a lot of different shapes and what we do day to day to support that. A lot of it is a policy issue that the Chinese government might put in place that hurts our agricultural exports. We both will translate it and put it out so our exporters know what the new policy is, and/or we will work with the Chinese government or whatever government that we’re working with so it doesn’t hurt our exports,” he said.

He also helps to keep ships stuck in port get to its intended destination, such as a container of corn that customs officials in Shanghai may not be approving.

“We will intervene on the behalf of the U.S. exporter company/grower to see what we can do to free that shipment so it’s not destroyed or sent back, because as you can imagine, it’s crazy expensive and it’s the last thing anybody wants to do is take it back,” he said.

Another aspect of his work is market intelligence, which essentially is reporting on what’s going on in China in the agricultural industry space.

“That feeds into what USDA in Washington puts out every month as far as like the WASDE (World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate) for the whole globe, ‘We think there’s going to be this much corn and Russia is going to export this much, the U.S. is going to export this much’ and so we feed into that. We also put out public reports on it. I specifically cover grains – soy, corn, wheat, barley, sorghum, biofuels. A lot of it is monitoring what’s happening in China, what’s their corn crop like this year. That’s one of my favorite things is to go out and do crop travel to actually see the crop,” he said.

He will remain in China for another six months, and then is bound for Argentina for three or four years.

“I’m very excited. I spent a semester there in college and I absolutely loved it,” he said.

He’s also worked in Afghanistan, the first a two-month assignment, the second a full year, as well as at the Embassy in Ottawa, Canada.

He takes pride in knowing he works for the U.S. agriculture providers.

“That is something that really motivates me and that’s why we’re here is to help American farmers and ranchers of what they’re selling or signal that, ‘Hey, there’s an opportunity for this over in this corner of the globe, and we, as American farmers are positioned to meet that demand,’” he said. “I have a lot of colleagues who don’t come from an ag background, but just growing up here, I have an understanding and appreciation for the industry, and also what our producers really go through. That’s something that really helps in doing my job every day.”

McGrath said this will be his life’s work.

“It’s pretty competitive to get into the Foreign Service. It’s a career path that once you’re in, you’re in. It will be my whole career. It’s already taken me to Afghanistan, China and Argentina, and I can’t even imagine where else it will take me,” he said.

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The Brandon Valley Journal

 

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