Developing New Markets Around the World
A gricultural export market development depends on long-standing, successful partnerships between non-profit U.S. agricultural trade associations, farmer cooperatives, non-profit state and regional trade groups, small businesses and USDA to share the costs of overseas marketing and promotional activities.
Under the MAP and the FMD programs, administered by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), private-sector groups contributed $477 million in the 2020 fiscal year to international market development and promotion. In fact, industry contributions represent nearly 70% of the buying power of the programs.
Federal funding for MAP was last increased in the 2002 Farm Bill, reaching $200 million annually in 2006. Federal funding for the FMD program was last increased in the 2002 Farm Bill to $34.5 million annually.
Since these increases, the size of the foreign agricultural market MAP and FMD help develop has more than tripled to in excess of $800 billion dollars a year.
A 2021 econometric study of export demand commissioned by USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) as required by Congress and conducted by IHS Markit, working with Texas A&M University economists, showed the following results on an annual basis between 2002 and 2019.
From 1977 to 2019, ag export volume, prices and revenue grew due to exports.
During this time, annual export value increased by $9.6 billion. That means market development programs contributed nearly 14 percent of all export revenue, for a grand total of $674 billion.
A separate study commissioned in 2016 by the Coalition to Promote U.S. Ag Exports with Informa Economics (now IHS Markit) working with Texas A&M and Oregon State University economists, showed that if MAP and FMD were doubled and private cooperator contributions increased by just 10 percent, ag export value would increase $3.4 billion per year on average, farm cash receipts would rise $2.2 billion a year on average, and 64,000 jobs would be created.
