USDA to overhaul office advancing U.S. ag interests abroad

The Bush administration plans to announce Wednesday a major reorganization of the Washington headquarters of the Agriculture Department's Foreign Agricultural Service.

The reorganization is intended to emphasize the FAS role in trade negotiations, trade agreement enforcement and promotion of the U.S. view of science and trade in foreign countries. The agency traditionally analyzed demand for U.S. products overseas and promoted those products.

The Bush administration has proceeded with the reorganization even though Congress declined the administration's request in its fiscal 2007 budget to cut in half -- to $100 million -- funding for the Market Access Program, which promotes the sale of U.S. agricultural products overseas. The 2002 farm bill authorized $200 million per year in mandatory funding for the Market Access Program.

FAS Administrator Mike Yost noted in a recent speech that the Bush administration wants to place a greater emphasis on "inherently" governmental programs rather than market promotion, which is undertaken in a partnership with private sector commodity groups. Commodity groups have lobbied Congress to fend off cuts to market promotion.

A USDA source said the agency has discussed turning market promotion programs into grants to commodity groups, while providing little USDA assistance. A House Appropriations Committee aide said the agency could reorganize without congressional action, but it does not have the power to shift the program to grants. Such action, the committee aide said, could only be undertaken in the next farm bill.

Yost said the agency, which has 500 civil servants and 140 Foreign Service officers, is "way understaffed" in the sciences, and he wants to hire 60 employees, including 30 to 35 in the next two to three months. Yost noted that the agency would emphasize defending U.S. farm products from foreign countries' use of animal and plant health rules as trade barriers.

An Office of Scientific and Technical Affairs will promote in developing countries the U.S. view of science, particularly in biotechnology. That office appears intended to counter the efforts of European nongovernmental organizations to discourage the use of genetic modification in developing countries.

Although the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is in charge of trade negotiations, another new FAS division will assist USTR with trade cases brought against the United Stats and in helping USTR "build a better case" against other countries, Yost said. If presidential trade negotiating authority is not renewed, Yost said, most of the action in trade is going to be in trade cases.

Another division would fulfill President Bush's trade commitments by helping developing countries build ports and other facilities that could increase imports and exports, Yost said. While farmers have complained about increasing imports, Yost said that farmers must realize that trade is a "two-way street."

Yost said consumer demand has driven imports, but critics have also noted that U.S. agriculture has lost market share in some foreign countries.