USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service touts 2022 accomplishments

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service was busy in 2022, and the agency is touting its accomplishments.

The agency said it has supported the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to transform the food system by building "more and better markets" for U.S. farmers and ranchers and improving and modernizing resources to better serve its customers.

Much of AMS’ work, the agency said, aligned with the recommendations in USDA’s February 2022 report in response to President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order that directed USDA and other federal agencies to secure and strengthen America's supply chains.

In addition, AMS’ work was guided by USDA’s report, “Agricultural Competition: A Plan in Support of Fair and Competitive Markets,”  prepared in response to President Biden’s executive order on promoting competition in America’s economy, the release said. The report set out USDA’s strategies to increase competition through investing in new competitors to address major bottlenecks in the food and agricultural supply chains, in particular meat and poultry processing and domestic fertilizer capacity.

“To transform the U.S. food system, we are diversifying critical supply chain infrastructure, expanding local and regional food programs, leveling the playing field, and enabling more and better markets for producers and consumers,” USDA Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt said in the release.

Through its programs and services, the release said AMS is strengthening the resilience and security of the food supply chain so that markets work better for both family farmers and the families they support.

The release said examples of AMS calendar year 2022 accomplishments include:

• Launching the $400 million USDA Regional Food Business Centers initiative to support underserved producers by providing localized assistance to access local and regional supply chains, including linking producers to wholesalers and distributors.
• Investing $130 million in supplemental funding from the American Rescue Plan for grants under the Local Agricultural Market Program (LAMP) to support direct producer-to-consumer marketing; local and regional food markets and enterprises; and value-added agricultural products.
• Using $1.1 billion of American Rescue Plan and Commodity Credit Corporation funding for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which uses noncompetitive cooperative agreements with state and tribal governments to procure and distribute local and regional foods and beverages that are healthy, nutritious and unique to their geographic area. The funding also was used for the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program (LFS), which strengthened the food system for schools by helping to build a fair, competitive and resilient local food chain and expand local and regional markets with an emphasis on purchasing from historically underserved producers and processors.
• Making available $80 million in supplemental funding from the American Rescue Plan to increase support for the Dairy Business Innovation Initiatives program. Each initiative can now access up to $20 million to further support processing capacity expansion, on-farm improvements and technical assistance to producers.
• Using AMS’ transportation data and analysis to rapidly assess and contribute to resolving unprecedented disruptions to agricultural transportation following the pandemic, including providing support for USDA’s plans to increase capacity for exporting chilled and frozen agricultural commodities at the Port of Houston in Texas, the sixth-busiest container gateway in the U.S.
• Continuing a series of Fair and Competitive Markets rulemaking activities to revise regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act and to improve competition in the meat and poultry industry; address poultry contracting and tournaments; unfair practices and undue preferences; and the harm to competition burdens from the courts.
• Working with the U.S. Department of Justice to develop FarmerFairness.gov, an online tool that allows farmers and ranchers to anonymously report potentially unfair and anticompetitive practices in the livestock and poultry sectors to USDA and DOJ for review by AMS’ Packers and Stockyards Division staff and DOJ staff.
• Publishing a final rule to secure the contract information needed to populate a Cattle Contracts Library developed at the direction of Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022.
• Publishing the Origin of Livestock (OOL) final rule for organic dairy which became effective on June 6, 2022. This change to the USDA organic regulations will promote a fairer and more competitive market for all organic dairy producers by making sure that certified USDA organic dairy products are produced to the same consistent standard.
• Publishing the Organic Livestock and Poultry Standards (OLPS) proposed rule to change USDA organic regulations for livestock health care practices, living conditions, transport of animals and slaughter practices.
• Publishing the Strengthening Organic Enforcement final rule that will strengthen oversight and enforcement of the growing organic market. This will create more robust organic control systems that will protect the organic label and provide the opportunity for all organic farms, ranchers and businesses to compete fairly.
• Registering the USDA organic seal with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which allows USDA and certified organic operations to include the registration mark ® with the seal. The registration also means the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection can now detain, reject, or re-export imported products confirmed to be fraudulently using the USDA organic seal.
• Continuing to promote the marketing of high-quality grain to domestic and international buyers through the activities of the Federal Grain Inspection Service, its FGIS field offices and official state and private agencies, which inspected 325 million metric tons of grain, including 139.6 million metric tons in exports.
• Establishing the Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) in six regions across the U.S. as part of USDA’s Organic Transition Initiative to help transitioning and recently transitioned producers who face technical, cultural and market shifts during the transition period and the first few years of organic certification.
• Developing the Hemp eManagement Platform (HeMP), a public-facing platform where hemp producers, state and tribal governments, testing laboratories and sampling agents can provide licensee background information, geospatial data, and test results to USDA about domestic help production.
• Launching the first-ever Market News Mobile App to provide producers and other stakeholders in the supply chain with instant access to current and historical market information.