Congressman Tom Osborne looked on approvingly in Lincoln Monday as officials from Archer Daniels Midland and the Colombian Poultry Industry Association announced a corn deal worth an estimated $14 million.

Osborne, who met with government officials in Colombia in 2002, said the sale of about 70,400 metric tons of Nebraska corn, the equivalent of about 700 rail hopper cars, could be an important breakthrough in a country that has been more interested in non-agricultural purchases up to now.

“The thing I’m really interested in is this opens up a new market for Nebraska overseas, and particularly for corn, because there is a very large poultry industry in Colombia at the present time.”

Monday’s announcement also could hold important political implications for Republican Osborne as he competes in what appears to be an increasingly tight May primary race with Gov. Dave Heineman.

Heineman has made much of the success of a series of trade missions to Cuba, including one that ended Friday. Heineman also has collected endorsements from the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation Friday and the Nebraska Farmers Union Monday.

Perhaps with all that in mind, Osborne used his appearance at the Embassy Suites in downtown Lincoln Monday to question the financial value of the sale of Nebraska dry beans to Cuba.

He compared the sale of 10,000 metric tons of beans there for $5 million to the sale of the same size order to Iraq earlier this year for $6.5 million — a sale he helped coordinate.

“I guess I can compare beans to beans in those cases,” he said.

Said Osborne of the Cuban sale: “I can’t see where that would have resulted in a profit.”

Nebraska Director of Agriculture Greg Ibach was not anxious to be put on the spot about the price of beans.

Ibach called the Colombian corn deal “exciting news for Nebraska.” He also said the first of three trips to Cuba “put dry beans back into that market for the first time in 50 years.”

But when it comes to bean prices, “our companies — they negotiate that for themselves,” Ibach said.

Bryce Kelley, director of business development for Kelley Bean in Scottsbluff, may also have been trying to stay out of the line of political fire Monday.

Kelley said he could understand what Osborne was saying, “that the two dollar amounts were different.” But prices often change substantially from day to day and “we don’t lose money on any business deal.”

Considered together, Kelley said the Iraq and Cuban bean deals “made a tremendous impact on our industry as a whole, because they ate up that carryover” of supply that appeared to be hanging over the market headed into 2006.

They were “a big win for growers.”

Back on the Colombian corn deal, ADM spokeswoman Shannon Herzfeld explained that the corn would come from the Dorchester-based Farmers Co-op, the Shelby-based United Farmers Co-op and the Eastern Nebraska Co-op, a three-way joint venture among ADM and co-op grain partners in Waverly and Elmwood.

Jorge Bedoya, based in Bogota, Colombia, as president of the Colombian Poultry Industry Association, also joined in Monday’s announcement and called it “a wonderful opportunity” for his country.

“The Colombian poultry industry is one of the largest importers of U.S. corn in the world,” Bedoya said.

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.