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When the astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a shipment of food recently, it included jam from a company called Stonewall Kitchen. Jonathan King and Jim Stott started selling their homemade jams from a folding table at a local farmers’ market in Maine in 1991. Today, their company sells specialty food products that are enjoyed all over the world, literally.

Stonewall Kitchen participates in the Food Export USA – Northeast Branded Program, which is funded by the Foreign Agricultural Service’s Market Access Program. MAP helps U.S. producers, exporters and trade organizations finance promotional activities for U.S. agricultural products. Over the years, the financial assistance from the program has helped this small business successfully export its jams, condiments, sauces and baking mixes to more than 40 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Central America and Southeast Asia.

With its rapidly developing economy and expanding middle class, Turkey has become an important market for U.S. food and agricultural products over the past decade. It’s also the destination of the latest USDA agricultural trade mission from June 10-14 as Acting Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse leads a U.S. delegation to promote U.S. agricultural exports.

Representatives from six state departments of agriculture and 20 U.S. companies will attend. During the mission, the delegation will travel to Istanbul and Ankara to learn about market conditions and regulations to help U.S. companies develop export strategies for Turkey. They’ll visit retail locations and tour various facilities including a U.S. hardwood importer.

Recently, I traveled to the Middle East to meet with local and U.S. Embassy leaders to discuss agricultural strategy within the region. Towards the end of my two-week journey, I also had the opportunity to meet with U.S. agricultural companies, state regional trade groups and cooperators at the USDA-endorsed Gulfood trade show in Dubai.

The show is the Middle East’s largest food, drink, food service and hospitality equipment exhibition, drawing buyers from throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) helps U.S. companies market their food and agricultural products at international trade shows through market development programs such as the Market Access Program (MAP).

For 80 years, Rogue Creamery has been passionate about the art of cheese making. This small company located in Oregon’s scenic Rogue River Valley produces a variety of handcrafted artisan cheeses using milk from its dairies. Its blue cheeses are considered “ambassadors” for the American Artisan and Farmstead cheese movements. Rogue Creamery credits the Foreign Agricultural Service’s (FAS) Market Access Program (MAP) and industry partners for helping the company expand sales of its award-winning cheeses.

The European Union (EU) is a relatively new market for U.S. beef exports. It wasn’t until August 2009 when the United States began exporting high-quality beef (marbled with a high fat content) to the EU under a negotiated tariff rate quota for non-hormone treated beef.

Over the last three years, USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has worked with the peanut and dairy industries to create a government-hosted electronic trade document repository. The eTrade Document Exchange (eTDE) System, funded by USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service through the Market Access Program, makes electronic trade documents, including official certificates, available securely through the Internet to facilitate the domestic and international movement of U.S. agricultural products.

This system provides users with the ability to access commodity-related trade documents as PDF files that can be used to verify hard copy documents or to eliminate the use of hard copy documents entirely. It allows authorized product owners, buyers, carriers, brokers, and government port agents access to critical information around the clock and around the world.

USDA collaborates with trade associations to provide this information as an export service to the supply chain. The certificates available in the repository are provided by a variety of document providers. Some certificates are provided by USDA, some by programs under department certification, and some from commercial sources that operate independently. USDA validates the identity of each document provider and has security controls in place to ensure that certificate data obtained from providers remains unaltered once it is posted to the site.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is funding its partners, the four State Regional Trade Groups (STRGs), to host a series of nationwide seminars that inspire small and medium U.S. food and agricultural companies to become exporters.

After more than two decades of exporting U.S. agricultural products, Good Life Foods is thriving internationally with support from USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).

What started as a family-owned bread company in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in 1991 is today a thriving, artisan Italian cracker company that sells gourmet products around the world.

La Panzanella’s international success is, in part, thanks to their participation in USDA-endorsed international food and beverage trade shows, which is one way that USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) helps U.S. companies increase international sales.

Earlier today in Vietnam, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA’s market development programs are investing roughly $213 million in more than 70 U.S. agricultural organizations to help expand commercial export markets for their goods. Consumers in the Asia Pacific, said the Secretary, recognize the United States as a reliable supplier of the highest-quality food and agriculture products. And USDA’s international market development programs are playing a significant role in the surging demand for the American brand of agriculture around the world.