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Major Agribusiness
Market Access Program

$450 million

"The Market Access Program funnels tax dollars to corporate trade associations and to cooperatives to advertise private products overseas. While proponents of the program claim that the Market Access Program boost its exports and creates jobs, there is no evidence to support that. As a matter of fact, the General Accounting Office studies indicate that this program has no discernible effect on U.S. agricultural exports." Representative Ed Royce (R-CA), as quoted in the Congressional Record, July 11, 2001.

The Market Access Program (MAP) is administered by the Foreign Services Department of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote the overseas marketing of U.S. agricultural products. MAP funds consumer promotions, market research, trade shows, advertising campaigns and other programs designed to subsidize the sale of high-value products in foreign markets by private cooperatives, trade associations and businesses. Over the last dozen years, $1.7 billion in taxpayer money has been spent on this program with much of it benefiting large corporations.

In the 1996 Farm Bill, Congress required MAP funds to be limited to farmer cooperatives and trade associations. However, many of these trade associations and cooperatives are extremely wealthy, powerful and diversified. For example, for fiscal year 2000, the program provided $2.5 million to the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council, of which both Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods are members, $3.4 million to the U.S. Grains Council which includes Archer Daniels Midland, Coors Brewing Company and Dow AgroSciences among other powerful corporations, and $5.6 million to the American Forest and Paper Association, which benefits members such as Weyerhaeuser. Altogether, this corporate welfare program costs taxpayers $90 million a year.


Green Scissors Proposal
Eliminate the Market Access Program, saving taxpayers $450 million over five years.

Current Status

On July 11, 2001, Representative Royce (R-CA) offered an amendment to the fiscal year 2002 Agriculture Appropriations bill (H.R. 2330) to prohibit funding to award any new allocations under the MAP or pay the salaries of personnel to award such allocations. The amendment failed, 85 to 341.

Program Hurts Taxpayers

Through the Market Access Program, taxpayers are forced to subsidize export promotion for many trade associations and companies that can afford their own advertising. The MAP has done little to assure that funds increase overseas promotional activities rather than simply replacing private funds that would have been spent anyway.

The federal government should not be deciding which products and businesses get money, and which do not. This practice is unfair and restricts level competition between different products and businesses.


Program Hurts the Environment

The MAP is one of many agricultural support programs that benefit primarily the wealthiest agricultural producers rather than truly helping small family farmers. Moreover, subsidies such as MAP encourage some of the most environmentally harmful forms of agriculture, from bioengineered crops to logging in our National Forests to factory farms with severe animal waste problems.

Contacts

• Cena Swisher, Taxpayers for Common Sense, (202) 546-8500 x108;
• Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth, (202) 783-7400 x229.