The Foreign Service Journal, May 2003

able terms; the admission of our rice on equal terms with that of Piedmont, Egypt and the Levant; a mitigation of the monopolies of our tobacco by the Farmers-general, and a free admission of our produc- tions into their islands were the principal commercial objects which required attention…” Jefferson’s task list consists whol- ly of improving market access for agricultural and fisheries products — duties that remain today a major preoccupation of the Foreign Agricultural Service. During his years in Paris Jefferson also shipped interesting plants and seeds back to Monticello, where they were propagat- ed and, if useful, introduced to American agriculture. For years, State Department diplomats handled agri- cultural reporting and specimen collection. William Eaton, consul at Tunis during President Washington’s administration, shipped Barbary sheep back to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. Under President John Quincy Adams, American consuls were formally instructed to for- ward rare plants and seeds to the Department of State, where clerks in the Patent Office saw to their distribution. State also began collecting agricultural information, espe- cially statistics. These were first published in the Patent Office’s 1842 annual report, which commented on British imperial preferences and competition from Canada. In 1862 President Lincoln created the Department of Agriculture, and collection of information on foreign agri- culture shifted to the new USDA’s Statistical Division. Interest in information on potential demand for U.S. agri- cultural products led in 1882 to the Statistical Division hir- ing an agent in the London consulate general to collect sta- tistics on European agriculture, especially grains and meats. This was USDA’s first overseas office. In 1905, a USDA Bureau of Statistics employee was posted to London — the department’s first overseas agri- cultural “commissioner.” His regular reports were pub- lished in monthly bulletins. World War I saw the tempo- rary end of nearly all foreign agricultural reporting, but USDA went ahead with creation of a Foreign Markets Investigation Division in 1917, anticipating what was to come. The war ended in November 1918, and by May 1919 USDA “Commissioner” Ed Foley was in London to study markets for U.S. agricultural exports. His results were so favorably received that in the 1920s agricultural commission- ers were posted to Buenos Aires, Belgrade, Berlin, Budapest, Marseilles, Rome, Vienna, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Sydney (though not all at the same time). Their good work led to a push for the commissioners to be granted diplo- matic status, which the State Department rejected, saying there was no statutory authority to do so. Official Diplomatic Status for Attachés In 1924 Representative John Ketcham introduced a “Foreign Crop Marketing and Report Bill” to codify the overseas work of agricultural commissioners and to grant them diplomatic status. Some members of Congress objected on the grounds that the Foreign Commercial Service could adequately fulfill the reporting and market- ing functions for agriculture, and the bill languished. In 1928 Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover testified in favor of the Ketcham bill, however, and after six years of wrangling, a bill granting diplomatic status to agricultural attachés was passed. By this time Hoover was president, and he signed the bill into law on June 5, 1930. The act also upgraded the USDA’s Foreign Section to division sta- tus, and renamed it the Foreign Agricultural Service. At this time the Foreign Agricultural Service was tiny, with eight commodity specialists in Washington and seven overseas posts. As the Great Depression set in, the offices in Australia and South Africa were closed. In 1939, President Roosevelt ordered the attachés of both Commerce and Agriculture transferred to the State Department. The agricultural attachés thus moved over to State; the domestic analysts of the Foreign Agricultural Service stayed at USDA and “FAS” became known as the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations, a staff office of the Secretary of Agriculture. Initially, OFAR’s relations with State were good. Immediately after World War II, State expanded the num- F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 Allan Mustard is an FSO with the Foreign Agricultural Service, which he joined in 1982. His overseas posts have been Moscow, Istanbul and Vienna, and he will return to Moscow this summer. Under President John Quincy Adams, American consuls were formally instructed to forward rare plants and seeds to the Department of State.