American Sheep Industry awarded funding
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service recently announced the agricultural organizations that are recipients of the Fiscal Year 2020 funding for the Market Access Program and Foreign Market Development program. The American Sheep Industry Association has once again been granted funding through each of these programs.
Additionally, ASI cooperates with the Quality Samples Program, which has been key in assisting new customers to try American wool.
“This is extremely important funding for the American wool industry as it continues to explore and grow export markets. The programs are key to building the current customer base and effective when investigating in markets that are either high-risk or developing,” said Rita Samuelson, ASI’s deputy director.
The MAP program shares the cost of overseas marketing and promotional activities that help build commercial export markets for agricultural products and commodities. ASI uses this funding for projects such as branding programs, promotion, trade missions, reverse-trade missions, first-stage processing trials and trade show participation.
The FMD program focuses on trade servicing and trade capacity building by helping to create, expand and maintain long-term export markets for American products. This supports other FAS programs, such as QSP which enables the wool industry to provide samples of American wool. These samples help a foreign customer learn about and try American wool and have been important in developing long-term customers who have purchased millions of pounds of American wool.
