Posted April 28, 2014
USDA’s export programs are now operational after
funding lapsed without a farm bill last year, according to USDA foreign
Agricultural Service Administrator Phil Karsting. Des Moines’s WHO TV reported on the story here.
Secretary
of Agriculture Tom Vilsack recently announced that USDA’s Foreign
Agricultural Service (FAS) awarded funding to more than 60 U.S. agricultural
organizations to help expand commercial export markets. USDA is now accepting applications for 2015
export development program funding.
“Now that Congress has passed the Farm Bill, USDA is
moving quickly to implement our trade promotion programs to help open and
expand opportunities for farmers, ranchers, and small businesses and build on
the past five years of record agricultural exports,” said Vilsack. “These programs are an important investment
in rural America. Every dollar we invest
in trade promotion provides $35 in economic benefits.”
The Market Access Program (MAP) allows FAS to partner
with agricultural trade associations, cooperatives, state regional trade groups
and small businesses “to share the costs of overseas marketing and promotional
activities that help build commercial export markets for U.S. agricultural
products and commodities.”
The Foreign Market Development (FMD) Program “focuses
on trade servicing and trade capacity building by helping to create, expand and
maintain long-term export markets for U.S.
agricultural products.”
For more information on agricultural trade, please
visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
