Key Trade Provisions Depend on Farm Bill Passage

The next step in the Farm Bill debate is discussion and debate of the two versions in conference. Both the Senate and House versions of the farm bill would continue the current levels of funding for the USDA Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) program. This reflects a strong level of bipartisan Congressional support for programs that help bolster U.S. agricultural exports.
Thad Lively, U.S. Meat Export Federation senior vice president for trade access, discusses key trade provisions included in the legislation, and which depend on Congress reaching a consensus on a final farm bill before the fiscal year ends:
Lively: “A provision, that is again in both versions, that would create an undersecretary for trade. We’ve never had a senior official at USDA who was designated as the go to person on agricultural trade at the department. We think that having that new position will raise the profile of exports at USDA and be beneficial. Another provision, that is of interest to us, doesn’t call for a specific change but it does create the possibility that when the House and the Senate go to their conference that they will have to talk about the issue of country-of-origin labeling.”
This second provision Lively mentions was inserted in order to create a legislative option for resolving the dispute with Canada and Mexico over U.S. statutory requirements for COOL.