market access program

When the astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a shipment of food recently, it included jam from a company called Stonewall Kitchen. Jonathan King and Jim Stott started selling their homemade jams from a folding table at a local farmers’ market in Maine in 1991. Today, their company sells specialty food products that are enjoyed all over the world, literally.

Stonewall Kitchen participates in the Food Export USA – Northeast Branded Program, which is funded by the Foreign Agricultural Service’s Market Access Program. MAP helps U.S. producers, exporters and trade organizations finance promotional activities for U.S. agricultural products. Over the years, the financial assistance from the program has helped this small business successfully export its jams, condiments, sauces and baking mixes to more than 40 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Central America and Southeast Asia.

With its rapidly developing economy and expanding middle class, Turkey has become an important market for U.S. food and agricultural products over the past decade. It’s also the destination of the latest USDA agricultural trade mission from June 10-14 as Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse leads a U.S. delegation to promote U.S. agricultural exports.

Representatives from six state departments of agriculture and 20 U.S. companies will attend. During the mission, the delegation will travel to Istanbul and Ankara to learn about market conditions and regulations to help U.S. companies develop export strategies for Turkey. They’ll visit retail locations and tour various facilities including a U.S. hardwood importer.

In the United States, “March Madness” refers to the frenzied college basketball tournaments where teams must win or go home. Culinary masters throughout Asia experienced their own version of “madness” in March by squaring off in the kitchen for a chance to compete in the inaugural “United Tastes of America – Asian Chef Challenge.” The finals of the competition will take place at the 2013 Taipei International Food Show’s USA Pavilion in June.

For 80 years, Rogue Creamery has been passionate about the art of cheese making. This small company located in Oregon’s scenic Rogue River Valley produces a variety of handcrafted artisan cheeses using milk from its dairies. Its blue cheeses are considered “ambassadors” for the American Artisan and Farmstead cheese movements. Rogue Creamery credits the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) Market Access Program (MAP) and industry partners for helping the company expand sales of its award-winning cheeses.

It’s only been four months since the historic U.S.-Korea free trade agreement (KORUS) removed two thirds of the tariffs imposed on U.S. food and agricultural products exported to South Korea. But already, sales of U.S. fresh cherries are on the rise. The elimination of a 24-percent import duty on cherries – along with marketing support from the U.S. cherry industry and the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) in Seoul – is helping boost U.S. cherry sales in Korea to record levels.

While beer may be the beverage most associated with Belgium, people there are acquiring a taste for California wines, thanks to efforts by the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) and the Wine Institute.

On March 7, FAS and the Wine Institute organized a wine tasting at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Brussels. In addition to showcasing 200 California wines, the event featured high-end beef and salmon hors d’oeuvres sponsored by the U.S. Meat Export Federation and the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

In 2009 when Tim Montz first traveled to Shanghai, China, representing the Texas pecan industry, Montz had to explain what pecans were. Two years later, promoting pecans to China and other countries is “business as usual” for the father-and-son team of Tim and Jake Montz of the Montz Pecan Company.

U.S. cattle ranching has evolved over time to bring together the cultural traditions of the West with new technology to produce quality U.S. livestock products. But did you ever think that these ways of the west could benefit a new frontier halfway around the world?

In 2007, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) worked with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to negotiate health certificates for the export of U.S. livestock and genetic material to Russia. The protocol was signed in 2008, allowing first-time U.S. exports of live cattle, semen, embryos, horses and swine. U.S exports of cattle, bull semen and cattle embryos to Russia were valued at nearly $12 million in 2010.  From January to May 2011, trade increased nearly fivefold compared to the same period last year.

Little did the Wilbur family know when they first settled on a farm in the Sacramento Valley in 1869 that they were laying the foundation for what would become one of California’s premier prune and walnut producers.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government kicked off the nationwide National Export Initiative “New Markets, New Jobs” tour designed to help connect small businesses with the resources they need to sell their products globally.