From her roots on the family farm in Colorado to the epicenter of Pacific Northwest grain trade, Tyllor Ledford’s career journey has always been grounded in her passion for agriculture.

She’s about to embark on the new chapter in this adventure – taking the extensive knowledge she’s gained working in the USW West Coast Office in Portland, Oregon, to a new role in the Philippines as the USW assistant regional director for South and Southeast Asia.

Ahead of her move, she shared her career path, her insights on the importance of customer education and more with Wheat Letter.

To start, tell us where you’re from originally and how you ended up working for U.S. Wheat?

I am from Durango, Colorado, which is a medium-sized mountain town in the southwest corner of the state. I grew up on a very small farm, where we grew alfalfa and had cattle and horses. I was very active in 4-H and FFA, and I was very passionate about staying in agriculture. So, when I was looking at colleges, I decided to attend Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. There, I was involved in horse judging and was a rider on the Texas Tech ranch horse team.

I studied agricultural economics at Texas Tech. Through my studies, I had the opportunity to study agricultural marketing abroad in Sevilla, Spain, and that was when I first fell in love with international trade.

I then pursued another summer study abroad program in China, where we went and toured agribusinesses in China like Cargill and the U.S. Grains Council, and that was my first glimpse into what kind of jobs were available in international trade – through the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), cooperators and the private sector.

After that trip, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in agricultural economics, where I studied the intersection of food security and conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. That really got my mind churning about the world of food security and development.

Through my mentors at Texas Tech, I found out about a job opening at U.S. Wheat. I applied for the job, and the rest is history! I was hired onto the team out in Portland, Oregon, and I have loved working at U.S. Wheat ever since. I have really just loved the people I get to work with, the places I’ve gotten to travel, the stakeholders on our board of directors and the customers that we help around the world.

Both of your previous roles with U.S. Wheat have a long history of serving as a training ground for working in an overseas market. How have these roles prepared you for starting your new job in Manila?

I started off as the assistant director of the USW West Coast Office in Portland, and some stars in our organization also started in this role: Mike Spier, USW president and CEO; Steve Wirsching, USW vice president and director of the USW West Coast Office; and Ian Flag, USW regional vice president for the European, Middle Eastern and North African Regions.

So the Portland office really has been a training ground for a lot of key staff in our organization. Three years ago, I moved into the market analyst role, and that job also has a very illustrious set of predecessors: Joe Sowers, USW regional vice president for South and Southeast Asia; Chad Weigand, USW regional vice president for Sub-Sahara Africa; Stephanie Bryant-Erdmann, USW assistant regional director for the Mexican, Central American, Caribbean Region; and Casey Chumrau, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission.

Through the market analyst role, you really get exposed to the very core of how wheat is traded. You are conversing with traders. You are very involved, and you are constantly reading the news, you are analyzing the trends and you are looking at the beating heart of supply and demand, which sets the tone for export prices and how U.S. wheat shows up in the global market. So, this role really connects you to how wheat is traded and what drives trade.

From there, you can take that foundation and go out into a market and communicate to customers what is influencing supply and build demand for U.S. wheat based on that foundation and the relationships you’ve built.

One of the major responsibilities of the USW market analyst is producing the weekly USW Price Report, which is widely consumed around the world. How has producing this report helped you establish relationships with grain traders and how will those relationships help you in your new role overseas?

The USW Price Report is the core of the market analyst job – it is your bread and butter. The Price Report is one of those tools where we help create transparency for our overseas customers.

So every week, I would call my contacts in the grain trade, they would provide me with basis indications, and then I would try to provide them with whatever information I felt was relevant and helpful for their jobs – to create that symbiotic relationship. From there, I would take the numbers and look for trends, aggregate them and compile everything into the weekly report we share with stakeholders and customers.

Moving into my current role, all of those relationships continue to be very important, because, ultimately, U.S. Wheat does not buy or sell wheat. The traders are who sell the wheat, and the customers are who buy the wheat. As the bridge between these two parties, it’s those relationships with trade that help you as a U.S. Wheat staff member that helps connect customers with the right people and make sure they’re getting the right product.

Let’s talk more about customers. The USW West Coast Office hosts many trade teams from May to October. Tell me about your experience helping customers gain firsthand knowledge during these trade team missions.

The USW West Coast Office in Portland hosts trade teams all summer, and we see people from around the world. What’s really cool about those interactions is that you can see the light bulbs click on.

A lot of times, Portland is the final stop for a trade team. They’ve started on the farm in wheat country, moved through the supply chain, and finally to Portland, where all of the wheat that is exported from the Pacific Northwest goes on the Columbia River. So you can see the light bulb click on, like “Oh! This is how wheat moves from the farm to the elevator to the export elevator and finally to my mill!”

It’s really cool to see our whole supply chain come together in Portland and see our customers really gain that understanding of what makes our supply chain the most reliable, the most transparent, and one of the most efficient in the world.

The start of that supply chain is the U.S. wheat farmer – and there’s not a lot of industries where the producer of the raw ingredient is so enmeshed in that trade relationships. As someone who grew up on a farm, what does it mean to you to represent American farmers in the Philippines?

The farmer is the reason why we do what we do. It is the reason why we have wheat to sell, because our farmers produce an efficient, high-quality crop that people around the world desire for their products.

As I look ahead to my time in the Philippines, I really look forward to being able to foster more of those relationships between customers and farmers and being able to show our customers the quality that our farmers produce and how proud our producers are of the product that they grow. I’m really looking forward to representing U.S. farmers throughout Southeast Asia.

Last Question. What is your favorite wheat-based food you’ll be able to find in your new market?

It’s not from the Philippines, but my favorite international food made with U.S. wheat is Japanese sponge cakes made with Western White wheat. The first time I ever tasted one, I thought I was eating a cloud!

Those Japanese confectionery products are truly spectacular, and I can see why we’ve devoted a lot of time and energy into that methodology and into what makes that product tick, because then we can use it in other markets as well. That kind of Japanese product is very popular throughout Asia.

I do always like a simple pandesal from the Philippines. It’s a really good, simple, tasty bread that you can use as a mainstay for any meal.