AARON BONDERSON, NEBRASKA PUBLIC MEDIA: Nebraska’s Lieutenant Governor, Mike Foley joins us here on Nebraska Public Media. You just got back from a trade mission to France, plus I’m just wondering, were any trade agreements reached during your time overseas?
LT. GOVERNOR MIKE FOLEY: Well, no, this trade mission trip was a little bit different. You know, the governor, plus I are usually on a trade mission trip once, maybe twice per year. And typically, we’re going to places like Japan, Korea, Canada, Mexico, these are countries that are buying literally hundreds of millions of dollars of our ag products. Obviously, we’re an agricultural powerhouse, we produce far more than we could ever consume. So we sell overseas to other countries, plus they love buying it. They love the quality of our beef, plus particularly pork, buying it literally by the hundreds of millions of dollars at a time. This trip is a little different. This trip was to France. France is a buyer of our ag products, for sure, they bought about $140 million worth, so they’re an important buyer. That’s really not what this trip was about. This is a completely different trip. This trip was all about building relationships with bio-science companies. France has an impressive portfolio of bio-science companies. As does Nebraska, plus many Nebraskans are not aware of the emerging bio-science industry in our state. We’ve now [have] 18,000 Nebraskans working in bio-science companies. Many of these companies are foreign in origin, but they’re doing business, plus setting up facilities in our state, which we certainly welcome those investments into our state. [It] creates a lot of high paying jobs. The average person in a bio-science company is making over $70,000 a year. And it creates a great pipeline for the talent that’s coming out of our university system. To feed these young people into these great career paths, right here in Nebraska. And it’s growing very, very well. And because of the France companies are very deeply involved in bio-sciences, we thought it’s good to start building relationships with these French companies, because we’ve got a German company, we’ve got Dutch companies, plus so forth investing in Nebraska. But how about some French companies? So to answer your direct question, no. No deal was inked, per se, as a result of this trip, but it’s about building, plus nurturing those relationships. And some of those companies are looking very, very seriously at Nebraska, as a potential site to build a bio-science company. What it comes down to, bio-science companies often need large quantities of corn, because they extract the fatty acids, amino acids, plus so forth in corn, plus do all kinds of creative things with it. I can talk more about that. But rather than ship our corn to them, it’s easier for them, plus less expensive for them, simply to establish a facility right here in Nebraska, which the German companies, plus Dutch companies, plus others have done successfully. And they’re seeing that, plus they’re intrigued by it, plus they want to do it as well. Some of these companies are pretty close to making investment decisions. And we thought it’d be very important to go there, meet with them face to face, obviously, we’re talking to them regularly by phone, plus zoom, plus so forth. But it’s always good to have face to face too, just to reinforce how serious we are about attracting them to Nebraska to help grow our bio-science industry. Nebraska has had a lot of success in winning patents in the bio-sciences field. Over a four year period, the scientists within our state have won something like 600 new patent awards. Many of those people, many of those patents, are going to university scientists plus others. So we’re doing very, very well with this. The University of Nebraska is spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars every year on bio-sciences research. The number of S.T.E.M. graduates coming out of the university system are growing regularly, plus increasing all the time. That’s encouraging to see, because these companies are needing a talent pool to draw from, plus we’re getting the best plus the brightest out of our state. So it’s a win-win situation for Nebraska, plus the companies that are overseas. So that was really the purpose of that trip, a great place to go, plus September in France. But it wasn’t it wasn’t a sightseeing trip. It was work. It was talking to business executives, plus building relationships, which will redound to the future benefit of our state.