2022 Unified Export Strategy is in the Books

USDBC submitted the annual Unified Export Strategy (UES) for the 2022 program year to USDA/FAS last week. The UES is the comprehensive annual global strategy for the U.S. dry bean industry that details the market conditions, constraints, opportunities, activities, and benchmarks in current and emerging export markets. The UES includes the MAP, FMD, GBI, and Emerging Market programs (EMP) that provide the majority of the global funding for the industry each year. With the exception of 2019 and 2020, which were supplemented with a one time allocation of trade mitigation funds under the Agricultural Trade Promotion program (ATP), USDBC usually receives around $2 million in funding between MAP, FMD, GBI, and EMP.

While strategies change from year to year to reflect the current global and market specific realities, the 2022 application underwent a particularly significant rewrite. This is due to a number of global trends including; the lingering impact of COVID and the desire for shelf stable healthy food, increasing popularity of plant slant and plant based diets, a desire to eat foods that are sustainably produced, a growing interest in bean ingredients such as flours, and an optimistic outlook regarding the resolution of long standing tariff disputes that have limited U.S. dry bean exports to certain markets. The application also addresses long standing trade policy constraints such as – lack of harmonization and missing global tolerances for pesticides (MRLs), ongoing retaliatory tariffs in critical markets, and lack of compliance with existing trade agreements that allow zero duty, zero quota imports of U.S. dry beans, and the need to produce evidence of the U.S. dry bean industry’s sustainable farming practices. Funding decisions and allocations will be announced in fall 2021.