United States Potato Board receives 5 million for the promotion of US Potatoes around the world

The United States Potato Board (USPB) received an allocation of $4,998,892 in program year 2015 Market Access Program (MAP) funds from the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) at USDA.

The funds will be used by the USPB to promote frozen, dehydrated, chip-stock, table-stock and seed potatoes in over 25 countries around the world.

These promotions will be directed at foodservice, ingredient, retail and consumer sectors in the targeted markets, mainly in Asia and Latin America.

MAP funds will more than double the $4 million in USPB funds applied to the international marketing programs.

The reach and impact of the MAP and USPB dollars will be further expanded by roughly $1.5 million in Quality Samples Program (QSP), Emerging Market Program (EMP) and Technical Assistance for Specialty Crop (TASC) funds which the USPB staff has obtained from FAS.

For the recently completed July 2013 – June 2014 marketing year, the USPB used a similar combination of funds to help drive U.S. potato exports to a record value of $1.8 billion on record volume of 3,206,848 metric tons (MT), fresh weight equivalent (FWE). The U.S. potato industry faces a number of challenges in the international market place in the coming year. These include a strengthening dollar, increased competition from Europe and elsewhere and the ongoing problems at ports on the west coast. It will be even more important than ever for the USPB to utilize these funds in an effective manner to increase demand for potatoes and potato products and guard market share despite the challenges listed above.

The MAP and other export promotion funds are obtained by the USPB Marketing Department staff through the submission of an extensive and comprehensive application known as the Unified Export Strategy (UES). This 300+ page plan of the strategies, market assessments, constraints, performance measures and activities is evaluated by FAS, along with analysis of past performance and other factors, to determine the ranking of each applicant in this highly competitive process. The USPB’s attainment of the highest ranking assured the potato industry received a favorable allocation of funds.

Unfortunately, due to sequestration and other draws on the MAP funds, the overall funding pool was down 3 percent for FY15, however, the USPB only received a 1 percent reduction in funding because of its excellent ranking.