Annual Funding Strategy Submitted to USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)

On June 8, USDBC submitted its 2019 Unified Export Strategy (UES) to FAS. The UES is our blueprint for overseas activities and is a comprehensive global strategy that lays out export targets, market dynamics, challenges and opportunities. We requested around $2.2 million for our combined Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) request. We usually request over $2 million and receive about $1.2 million. As we have almost $2 million in ongoing Emerging Market Programs, we only submitted one new proposal this year for Vietnam.
Our strategy this year reflects a new program emphasis on trade policy with new proposed activities in several countries in response to ongoing trade disputes that will require enhanced outreach on our part. These are already being addressed this year where we have been able to use existing flexibilities within our approved strategy document but we wanted to build in flexibility for 2019 as well. We are also planning to conduct brief visits to underexplored markets to establish new export flows. For 2019 this will minimally include Chile, Peru, and South Korea. We expect to hear about approved funding levels in the next few months and look forward to our continued public/private partnership with FAS. In the meantime, we continue to work with our colleagues in the agricultural trade community to push for full funding of MAP and FMD in the next Farm Bill.