Trade missions and work to extend the reach of U.S. agricultural products remains crucial to expanding U.S. ag exports. The Coalition to Promote U.S. Agricultural Exports, representing more than 100 agricultural groups, wrote to the House and Senate Subcommittees on Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration expressing the need for American farmers and businesses to have continued investment in the Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development Program.

Specifically, the coalition requested that Congress maintain $255 million for Agricultural Trade Promotion and Facilitation and that within this amount, MAP receive at least $200 million and the FMD program receive at least $34.5 million.

The European Commission announced on December 17, 2020 that it will allocate the equivalent of $222 million to promote European Union agri-food products with promotion programs in countries around the world, including China, Japan, South Korea, Canada and Mexico.  

“The twin challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as competitors’ export promotion programs, highlight the need for continued investment in these public-private partnerships,” the letter states. “MAP/FMD funding is critical to help U.S. farmers, ranchers and food exporters keep pace and to help us make up for lost time after two and half years of trade conflict and retaliatory tariffs.”

MAP and FMD are cost-share programs funded in the 2018 Farm Bill and administered by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service and continue to showcase examples of effective public-private partnership. Government investment is an important part of this effort; however, industry funds now represent about 73% of total annual spending on market development and promotion, up from roughly 45% in 1996 and less than 30% in 1991. For every dollar invested, coalition partners return more than $28 in export gains. And these programs over the last decade are responsible for export growth totaling $309 billion.

“Studies show these public-private programs provide a rate of return that far exceeds their public expense,” says Robbie Minnich, coalition chair and senior government relations representative at National Cotton Council. “We finally see new opportunities to start overcoming two and a half years of trade conflict and pandemic restrictions, fully funded export programs are critical to help U.S. farmers, ranchers and food exporters keep pace with the rest of the world’s exporting countries.”

FMD has been funded at the same level for 18 years, the coalition writes. For MAP, funding has remained level since 2006 even as sequestration has siphoned funds for almost a decade. The letter asks legislators allocate to use discretionary funds to provide $7 million - less than 3% of the program investment - for USDA administrative and operational costs to help reverse this diminished value.

“Working to expand our export markets requires every dollar these programs provide,” the coalition wrote.

Future trade missions

In 2020, many agricultural commodity groups were faced with not doing in-person events. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack shared in a recent exclusive Farm Progress interview, that while he was president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, last year required creativity to create a presence to showcase American products. Instead of constructing a show booth for two to three days and then taking it down, a virtual booth can be up for months and visited repeatedly.

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack interview from Feedstuffs 365 on Vimeo.

USDEC for example created a 50’s theme jukebox type virtual center for site visitors to pick a cheese and find out more about. He says moving forward, USDA will need to work with its collaborators and commodity groups to make sure USDA resources can help to fund those creative ways in making contact with purchasers and partners around the world.

Vilsack says, when things return to a new normal, USDA will then evaluate the proper mix of in-person and virtual interactions to expand U.S. ag exports. “You don’t always have to ‘be there’ but you do have to be there in some form and fashion,” Vilsack shares.

The coalition’s letter adds, “Fruitful trade partnerships take time, and these funds for such activities as buyers’ missions, trade shows, and in-country meetings go a long way toward promoting U.S. agricultural trade. One such example is the growth in U.S. food and agricultural exports to China over the last fifteen years from $7.7 billion in food and agricultural exports in 2006 to $28.7 billion in 2020.”

The USA Poultry & Egg Export Council of Stone Mountain, Georgia used MAP funds last year to resume poultry exports to Mexico following a highly pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak in Chesterfield, South Carolina. Following the HPAI outbreak, Mexico banned all poultry exports from South Carolina. Luckily, USAPEEC and its MAP-funded office in Mexico City worked with Mexican and USDA officials to limit the ban to the county level. As a result, statewide poultry exports to Mexico – worth $34.2 million per year – were able to resume.

Similarly, the U.S. Wheat Associates invested less than $14,000 in MAP funds to bring purchasing and production managers from Mexico’s third largest milling company to North Dakota to meet with rail loading elevators and industry representatives. As a result, the miller purchased 11,000 metric tons  of U.S. wheat valued at $2.3 million.

In the fall of 2019, five Vietnamese yogurt manufacturers came to the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research with FMD funds to learn more about cultured dairy product manufacturing. Those manufacturers eventually launched 11 products using US dairy proteins and skim milk powder, and U.S. dairy exports directly linked to the manufacturers are estimated to be $25 million, the letter states.