Special Report

Corn, Wheat, Soybeans seek more $$ for market programs

Commodity groups want funding increased in the next Farm Bill for USDA’s export market programs.

Washington state grower Brett Blankenship, past president of the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG), says both the Foreign Market Development and Market Access Programs have been a target for savings to offset other cuts through the years. He told reporters at Commodity Classic those ‘MAP’ and F-M-D programs are the best trade protection growers have now, “We’ve been lucky to hold the spending where it has been but we think in lieu of not having trade deals then we need to supplement in another way to enhance those export efforts.”

Illinois grower Ron Moore, president of the American Soybean Association (ASA), told delegates at the ASA annual meeting at Commodity Classic that double the funding is not asking too much, “The European Union spends a BILLION dollars promoting their products into the export market. We are about 1-quarter of that in the United States so we’re asking to double to $469-Million dollars, which is still less than half of what the European Union does, what our competitors are doing.”

ASA and NAWG support the doubling of funds. The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) supports a sustained increase in the MAP and FMD programs but has not committed to a certain amount.