SUMMER BOARD MEETING COVERS NEW GROUND

USDBC’s Summer Board meeting took place July 19 and 20 in Snowmass, CO in conjunction with the US Dry Bean Convention. This year’s meeting included a heavy focus on USDBC’s response to the current trade environment and the downturn in global exports. The Agricultural Affairs and International Promotion Committees (IPC) both discussed and defined several new approaches to shoring up global markets and expressing industry policy priorities including another DC Fly In in spring of 2020 and the implementation of several new trade opportunities under the new Agricultural Trade Promotion (ATP) program. During the meeting USDBC received news of additional funding under a second tranche of the ATP program, bringing our total ATP allocation to $2 million and our total funding for global export promotion in 2019 – 2020 to $4 million. A sincere thanks to our partners at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) for this support.

USDBC also launched a new strategy for its Domestic Promotion program, to begin implementation shortly and held the first meeting of the newly created Bean Innovation Committee which will look at new approaches for the novel use of US dry beans and bean ingredients with an initial domestic focus. USDBC’s food aid committee met and had a special presentation from our new Food Aid Specialist on recent challenges to traditional bean food aid flows and recommendations on future strategies and priorities. USDBC welcomed several new board delegates and a new dealer board member. We have an extremely packed agenda for the remainder of 2019 and some very exciting times ahead for our industry.