Agricultural Trade

This report provides an overview of the structure, funding, and promotional efforts of the organizations that do foreign market development for agricultural products in five countries that are among the world's largest exporters of high-value products. GAO discusses the (1) organizations in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands that help develop foreign markets for their high-value agricultural products; (2) programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for foreign market development of high-value products; and (3) ways in which these five countries' programs are evaluated to determine their effectiveness in boosting exports.

GAO found that: (1) France, Germany, and the United Kingdom each have an integrated market development organization that provides an array of services and promotes most agricultural products; (2) the Netherlands relies primarily on independent commodity associations to promote its agricultural products; (3) all of the countries spent less on foreign market development than the United States in 1993; (4) because so many factors influence a country's export levels, information on promotion expenditures alone is not sufficient to determine the effectiveness of a country's foreign market development efforts; (5) the countries' foreign market development programs are financed mostly by the private sector, while U.S. foreign market development programs are coordinated by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service; and (6) the market development organizations reviewed and the United States generally engage in the same kinds of promotional activities, including market research, trade shows, consumer promotions, and trade servicing.