'Munching' On 'U.S. Mystique'
Swedes like U.S. marshmallows. They also like pancake mixes, instant mashed potatoes, and snack foods from the United States.

     Bob Tetro, until recently the Foreign Agricultural Service's agricultural counselor in Sweden, who is currently the special advisor to FAS's deputy administrator for international trade policy, noted that U.S. agricultural products, that present what might be called a 'nostalgic picture' of the United States, tend to do well in Sweden.

     "So, since we in FAS help to promote the sale of U.S. agricultural products to overseas markets around the world," he noted, "if we can be successful at that by emphasizing a 'nostalgic picture of the United States,' or an 'American mystique,' then that's all the better."

     In fact, Sweden used to buy marshmallows mainly from Spain, but those marshmallows couldn't be successfully toasted over a fire, as is the custom and practice in the U.S. Plus, once Swedes--who watch a lot of television shows that come from the U.S.--saw those shows depicting American campfire cookouts, the idea of roasting marshmallows became popular.

     Tetro added that there are other reasons for Swedish interests in American food products. Swedes have enjoyed a noticeable upswing in vacation travel to the United States in the past two decades.

     "Plus," Tetro noted, "demand for U.S. foods is also fed by a pattern of travel to the U.S. by young Swedish au pairs, interns, and students." That demand is also strengthened by the prevalence of English as a second language in Sweden.

     Dan Berman, director of FAS's Agricultural Export Services Division, said that FAS employees, located at both headquarters and overseas posts around the world, promote U.S. agricultural products abroad by assisting in such initiatives as supermarket retail promotions, showcasing regional cuisines from across America to foreign markets, encouraging travel by U.S. chefs to foreign markets, and publishing--in the appropriate local language--American recipe books specifically designed for food service professionals in other countries.

     But what about specific initiatives to promote U.S. agricultural products abroad by tying them to 'an American mystique,' or 'nostalgia for the U.S.', in a foreign country?

     "That particular technique might work fabulously in one country, but might be a total bust in another country," Berman advised. "We rely on our FAS offices overseas to know whether that approach would work in their specific host country--and whether it wouldn't."

     "When it does work, promoting U.S. agricultural products abroad by selling an 'American mystique' can take time," Tetro acknowledged. "But it can be worth the effort--and it builds on a natural foundation occurring due to the amount of foreign tourist trade across the United States."
--Jill Lee

Helping A Trend Take Off
     Errol Bragg's staff was amazed recently when Nichole Holley, a marketing specialist in the Agricultural Marketing Service, laid out the numbers: on average, 2,500 visitors every week pass through the USDA Farmers Market located just outside one of the Department's headquarters buildings in Washington, DC.

     Bragg, program manager of the Wholesale and Alternative Markets Branch in AMS's Transportation and Marketing Programs, said he was pleased to see the new figures, which exceeded staff estimates. The headquarters farmers market has expanded from five market days in 1996 to five months of weekly markets this season: every Friday from June through October.

     The USDA Farmers Market came about six years ago when AMS and the Department decided to showcase its support for farmers markets nationwide. That same year was the first time that the U.S. secretary of agriculture issued a formal proclamation designating a week in mid-summer as National Farmers Market Week. Since then, the USDA Farmers Market and National Farmers Market Week (August 5-11, 2001) have become an annual tradition.

     "But it wasn't so long ago," Bragg recalled, "when farmers markets were hardly talked about--and not a formal subject of study in USDA." Two decades ago farmers markets--gatherings of area farmers at a central location for the purpose of selling fresh produce directly to consumers--were a peripheral part of AMS's studies of wholesale produce market facilities.

     Then, in the late 1980s, a number of producer groups, farmers market organizers, and city planners, interested in selling produce directly to customers, turned to AMS for design help and planning advice. The growing number of requests prodded AMS staff to wonder: How many farmers markets were there, and did they suggest a new economic trend?

     So, they counted. "The result," said Holley, "was a directory that AMS published in 1994, listing 1,755 farmers markets around the country."

     "Seven years and three directories later," Holley said, "we've identified more than 2,800 farmers markets operating in the nation today, and with new information coming to us every day, we're continually updating the data on our Web page" which is http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets

     The success of farmers markets and the popularity of the USDA directory has brought to Bragg's program a steady flow of communities seeking help to set up their own farmers markets. Among the latest of these projects nationwide, AMS architect Fidel Delgado has been working with planners and a consulting architectural firm to develop a new facility for New Mexico's Santa Fe Area Farmers Market.

     Closer to home, Holley manages the weekly USDA Farmers Market operations and coordinates with state departments of agriculture on the annual celebration of National Farmers Market Week.

     Claire Klotz, an economist on Bragg's team, advised organizers last year on how to improve a farmers market in Washington, DC's Anacostia neighborhood. She also recently released two publications--"Farmer Direct Marketing Bibliography 2001" and "National Directory of Farmers Market and Direct Marketing Associations 2001"--that include farmers market resources.

     Staff economist Tim Payne is helping to take the program's efforts to a new level by conducting a new, in-depth study of farmers markets in the United States. "By gathering data about the operational and structural features of these markets, including how many farmers and customers participate, how far they travel, and how much is taken in annual sales, we hope to better understand how and why farmers markets operate," he said.

     Walking through the USDA Farmers Market on a recent Friday, Bragg said, "In just over a decade we've succeeded in communicating to the nation all these benefits that farmers markets bring: benefits to farmers, to consumers, to community life, and to the environment."

     "What's more, as we continue to examine these markets, we're still learning."
--George Chartier

The Act Is 75 Years Young
     Not everybody looks forward to going to work every day, but Jeff Jobe and Tom Miller say they're on a mission. Jobe, director of the Rural Business-Cooperative Service's Cooperative Development Program for Iowa, based in Des Moines, and Miller, an RBS co-op development specialist based in the Rural Development field office in Maquoketa, Iowa, are both rural born and bred. They also both see their jobs of helping develop agricultural cooperatives in Iowa as helping preserve a way of life they love.

     That's in keeping with the 75^th anniversary of the Cooperative Marketing Act, signed into law on July 2, 1926, which began USDA's assistance to farmer cooperatives across the country.

     "By its passage," noted Randy Torgerson, RBS's deputy administrator for cooperative services, "the idea of 'helping farmers to help themselves' became national policy."

     Jobe explained that cooperatives assisted by RBS are businesses--owned and operated by agricultural producers--that are designed to help those producers market and process their crops and/or obtain farm supplies and services. "The ag co-op model offers benefits to those producers, such as economies of scale and greater marketing power, that aren't available to them as individual producers," he observed.

     "Ag co-ops are more important than ever in the struggle to preserve the family farm," Miller added.

     Torgerson noted that when Congress passed the 1926 Act, cooperatives were in their heyday, with thousands being organized and thousands more already in existence. "Significantly," he pointed out, "Congress recognized that a federal source of assistance was necessary to document the best principles, practices, and structure that could serve farm interests."

     Over the past 75 years, USDA's assistance to agricultural cooperatives--which, since a USDA reorganization in 1994, has been administered by RBS's Cooperative Services program--has included not only the development of agricultural cooperatives across the country but also RBS initiatives to help support understanding and use of the cooperative form of business through research, technical assistance, statistics and education, and information products.

     Examples of such information products include a bimonthly magazine, "Rural Cooperatives," and more than 150 reports and videos about all aspects of cooperative operations, ranging from "How to Start a Cooperative" to "Tax Treatment of Cooperatives." Dan Campbell, deputy director of public affairs for the Rural Development mission area, noted that USDA colleagues at headquarters and field offices, who may be asked questions by USDA customers about RBS assistance to agricultural cooperatives, can access those publications at www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/newpub.htm

     RBS agricultural economist Bev Rotan pointed out that USDA's involvement with cooperatives over the years has evolved with the changing needs of farmers and other rural residents for different 'bundles'--literally--of services. "Group purchasing of carload lots of salt, binder twine, fertilizer, and coal in earlier days," Torgerson added, "has given way to sophisticated manufacturing and application of crop protectants, fertilizers, feeds, and fuels."

     In that same fashion, agricultural co-op services to former groups, such as those which operated frozen food lockers, statewide insurance programs, and county artificial breeding services, have been replaced by activities such as integrated pest management programs, use of satellite technology in field applications, genetic record keeping and propagation of crops and livestock, expanded farm credit services, and regional electric and telecommunications programs.

     More recently the spotlight has turned to value-added cooperatives--operations that process, distribute, or otherwise add value to a raw agricultural product--as the best chance for many farmers to claim a greater share of the consumer's dollar.

     "But the goal of our Cooperative Services program, over 75 years," Torgerson underscored, "has continued to be to expand knowledge--a form of intellectual capital--of the cooperative method of doing business, on behalf of the estimated 3,500 farmer-owned agricultural co-ops in the nation today, plus the new co-ops constantly being formed."

     And in Iowa, as in similar locations around the country, RBS employees have translated that goal into such actions as identifying local sources of financial and technical assistance, developing assistance manuals, creating networks of support, and conducting cooperative-related research, to get co-ops--as well as farmers and ranchers looking to set up co-ops--the help they need.

     "I can't think," Miller affirmed, "of anything much I'd rather be doing than working with agricultural co-ops."
--Steve Thompson