Mason City, IA- Iowa's exports have doubled over the past five years. Last year, Iowa shipped more than nine billion dollars overseas. A large portion of those goods were agricultural products.

Here in North Iowa, Kim Pleggenkuhle is seeing the increase in the soybean business. He's been exporting beans for more than 30 years.

"We live for exporting, we have to have exporting," said Pleggenkuhle.

Pleggenkuhle grows a special kind of bean. It's not genetically modified. He said many people don't grow it anymore and the bean is in high demand all over Asia. Pleggenkuhle said people over there also want the soybean bi-product. All the demand has pushed his sales up more than 14 percent.

Pleggenkuhle said the downside is the price of shipping has increased over the past three years. He said it use to only cost around 900 dollars to ship a container of soybeans from Iowa to Japan. But the rising cost of fuel makes the grand total more than 2,000 dollars a container. Despite the costs, Pleggenkuhle said there is one reason his exports are still going.

"A couple things that have helped is our dollar is weak, which make these high price beans cheap to them."

In the past, Pleggenkuhle would compete against other countries to get business overseas. Now they can get more for their money in the U.S. than elsewhere. Pleggenkuhle said he doesn't like to see the drop in the dollar but he's got a positive outlook for the future of Iowa's exports.

"Exporting is here to stay. We need them as much as they need us."