42 JUNE 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL conditions, to increase production, and to promote soil health. And we regularly engage our trading partners to ensure that science—not philosophy—is the basis for market access decisions. While market access may be the proverbial bread and butter of FAS, it’s not our only contribution to U.S. agricultural export success. Not by half. Do you have any idea how many 40-ft. containers and bulk-freight ocean liners it took to move $176 billion of agricultural exports in 2024? The following example using delicious, U.S. grain-finished beef might help paint a picture. In 2024 we exported about 1.3 million metric tons of beef and beef products worth $10.5 billion. If a 40-ft. refrigerated container holds about 25 metric tons, then we shipped more than 50,000 containers of beef overseas. And if each container holds 20 pallets, and if each pallet held 50 boxes of beef, then that means we shipped more than 50 million boxes of beef. That’s just beef! Each of those boxes had a sticker tying that shipment of U.S. beef to the specific U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) export certificate for that shipment. But with that many boxes of beef being exported and inspected upon arrival in foreign markets, it is a mathematical inevitability that mishaps with stickers, certificates, and other paperwork would occur. When a U.S. exporter reports such a mishap, the FAS network of Foreign Service officers and 350 local staff members across 95 offices in 75 countries answers the phone. If FAS weren’t there, that beef would be sent back to the United States (with the exporter paying thousands in additional freight costs), or, even worse, it would be destroyed at the foreign port of entry. FAS overseas staff personally know officials in the export market’s agriculture ministry. Oftentimes, FAS has brought those ministry officials to the United States to learn about the U.S. food safety system. USDA sister agencies like the Food Safety and Inspection Service may have trained those same ministry officials on risk assessment or international standards. FAS relationships with ministries of agriculture in more than 100 countries around the world lead to creative solutions to get detained shipments out of customs and into customers’ stomachs, preserving tens of millions of dollars of U.S. agricultural exports every year. Trade Shows and Trade Missions Food and agricultural exports are big business. In 2024 global food and agriculture trade totaled more than $2 trillion, and U.S. exporters face stiff competition for every sale, even in countries where we have obvious geographical and cultural advantages. I don’t know what the average American envisions when they think about “agricultural trade,” but they probably think about commodities (e.g., corn, soybeans, cotton, rice) in big volumes on boats with cool size designations like Panamax or Supramax. But commodity exports represent only about half USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue (center) and the author (fourth from right) conducting North American agricultural diplomacy with young agriculturalists from the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and with Canadian and Mexican diplomats at the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, 2017. COURTESY OF EVAN MANGINO
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