| USDA Outlines Ag Export Funding |
| Monday, 01 February 2010 19:24 | |
 Washington, D.C., January 2010 – U.S. Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced the allocation of $234.5 million to be distributed across 70 separate U.S. trade organizations, in a bid to help promote the country's food and agricultural products overseas.
The funding has been allocated under the Market Access Program (MAP) and the Foreign Market Development (FMD) Cooperator Program, both administrated by the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAO). "In today's highly competitive international markets, we must provide our exporters with the resources the need to compete overseas during the 21st century," said Vilsack. "When you consider the current global financial crisis, increasing production in key competitor countries and aggressive use of export promotion tools by our competitors, USDA's market development programs are more important than ever." MAP uses funds from the USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation to share the costs of overseas market development and promotional activities with U.S. non-profit agricultural trade organizations, state regional trade groups and cooperatives. Activities conducted with MAP funding include market research, consumer promotions for retail products, technical capacity building and seminars to educate overseas customers. SOURCE: USDA
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