USA: OTA is awarded $ 750,000

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) has approved $ 750,000 in Technical Assistance for Specialty Crops (TASC) funding over three years to the Organic Trade Association (OTA), in partnership with Sustainable Strategies, for projects that analyze technical trade barriers for U.S. organic products. "OTA envisions that this funding will go a long way towards understanding the hurdles that impede the trade of organic products and finding solutions to opening trade options for U.S. organic producers," said David Gagnon, OTA's Chief Operating Officer and OTA leader on U.S. organic export projects.
 

With the funding, OTA member Sustainable Strategies, Advisors in Food and Agriculture, will conduct various comparative GAP analyses and overviews of international markets for U.S. organic products. Comparative GAP analyses are detailed, side-by-side comparisons of the U.S. national organic standards and those of designated countries. Each analysis identifies the barriers to exporting U.S. organic products to specific international specialty markets.
 

In their project proposal to FAS, OTA and Sustainable Strategies pointed out that U.S. organic producers are at an unfair trade disadvantage because various foreign nations, certifiers and their producers enjoy full access to the 50-state U.S. market while U.S. organic producers have no reciprocal access to their markets. As a result, U.S. companies often must negotiate with sovereign nations on an inherently uneven playing field.
 

www.ota.com