SALEM — Gov. John Kitzhaber is preparing for a two-week trade mission to Asia, where he will visit the country that imports the bulk of the state’s agricultural goods.

The governor leaves Sunday with a delegation of both public- and private-sector leaders and plans to visit China, South Korea and Japan.

The state exported $18 billion dollars in goods internationally last year. Central Oregon grass seed and specialized seed farmers send about 25 percent of their product to markets in Asia.

China top recipient

China topped the list for being the state’s largest international trading partner and Japan consumes much of the state’s agricultural products, according to information from the Governor’s Office. The state sends a variety of other products to the Asian countries as well, such as paddles made in Bend. And although the governor will be promoting many of Oregon’s products, trade missions have long been a crucial component in the state’s agricultural community.

“We have an extremely productive agriculture sector here and relatively few people,” said Dalton Hobbs, the assistant director at the Oregon Department of Agriculture. “It’s difficult to consume everything we grow here, and it needs to find a home outside the region. During the planning for the 2008 Olympics, when the Chinese needed grass seed to beautify Beijing, they looked to Oregon farmers.”

The Willamette Valley is known as “the grass seed capital of the world.” And grass seed growers — a $9 million crop a year crop in 2010 for Central Oregon — continue to send a portion of their product to Asian countries.

Mike Weber, of Central Oregon Seeds Inc., estimates about 25 percent of the Kentucky bluegrass seeds grown in Central Oregon is sent to China.

After the tsunami, earthquake and nuclear disaster that rocked Japan, the country will likely be depending on more products from Oregon in the future, Hobbs said. He expects an increase in hay exports after Japan was forced to throw out much of its locally grown product for fear of contamination. Speciality seed crops — garlic, carrot seed, mint — could also see a spike in exports.

Carrot seeds

Central Oregon is the largest carrot-seed producing area in the world, according to the Jefferson County Oregon State University Extension Office. Overall, specialty seeds were a $17 million crop for the region in 2010.

“The products you produce in your region, the specialized grass seeds, the vegetable seeds, are highly sought after in markets in Korea and Japan, with the purity of the growing region in Jefferson County,” Hobbs said. “There is also a considerable interest in the hay products that come out of Christmas Valley because of the quality and protein.”

Trade missions have an interesting history in the state.

Not long after World War II it was a group of wheat growers in Eastern Oregon who went on the first informal trade mission, Hobbs said. The farmers realized they needed to find an export market for their product. So they bought an old Greyhound bus, converted it with drop-down windows and shipped it to Japan. Then they cruised from one end of the country to the next, talking to Japanese consumers and showing them how to use Oregon wheat to make noodles.

“If you can imagine a postwar Japan, it was war-torn. People were hungry, and there’s a big, American Greyhound bus with Americans inside, teaching Japanese housewives how to cook ramen noodles as part of the daily diet,” Hobbs said. “It was a brilliant stroke of micro-development genius.”

The trade mission led by the governor is also expected to meet up in China with another trade mission already under way by Oregon state lawmakers.

Although a trade relationship between the state and Asian nations already exists, Hobbs said, sometimes a face-to-face conversation is best.