USDA Amps Up Trade Missions

USDA Amps Up Trade Missions

Haylie Shipp
Haylie Shipp
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I’m Haylie Shipp.

Trade is often a big topic of conversation on this program and that was matched last week at the Commodity Classic in New Orleans when Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack addressed attendees. The secretary announced that the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service added four new mission trips to its 2022 schedule…

”We indicated a desire to expand on the number of agricultural missions, trade missions we are going to conduct in 2022, with additional opportunities in the UK, London in June, the Philippines in July – that’s our ninth-largest market, by the way – Kenya in October, late October into November, and to Spain in November and early December. And this is designed to emphasize the important role that we see in expanding opportunity beyond our reliance on one or two key markets.”

The agency is looking at finding new markets for American commodities…

“We want to make sure that we're active in a number of other emerging markets: North Africa and the Middle East are two, in particular, where I think we have some real opportunity, and Southeast Asia, of course, where we're already engaged, and we need to expand on our efforts there.”

Good news for states positioned perfectly for exports.

Secretary Vilsack also announced the availability of $250 million that the USDA wants to invest in fertilizer expansion here in the U.S. He says that they expect to have that application process available for applications sometime this summer.

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