The Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) is the foreign affairs agency with primary responsibility for the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) overseas programs – market development, international trade agreements and negotiations, and the collection of statistics and market information. It also administers the USDA's export credit guarantee and food aid programs and helps increase income and food availability in developing nations by mobilizing expertise for agriculturally led economic growth. The FAS mission statement reads, "Linking U.S. agriculture to the world to enhance export opportunities and global food security," and its motto is "Linking U.S. Agriculture to the World."
Early history USDA posted its first employee abroad in 1882, with assignment of Edmund Moffat to London.National Archives, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State, Consular Correspondence, 1785–1906, Instructions to Consular Officers, Consular Instructions, 1800–1906, vol. 104, p. 99, call number A-1, Entry 59 In 1894, USDA created a Section of Foreign Markets in its Division of Statistics, which by 1901 numbered seven employees.Official Register of the United States Government, 1901, vol. 1, p. 1094 It was succeeded over the next few decades by increasingly larger units. Creation of this series of units in Washington to analyze foreign competition and demand for agricultural commodities was paralleled by assignment abroad of agricultural statistical agents, commodity specialists, and "agricultural commissioners".
Moffat went out as a "statistical agent" of USDA's Division of Statistics but with the status of Deputy Consul General on the roster of the Department of State at London.Moffat's status is attested in the British diplomatic lists in London, the Official Register of the United States Government, and the State Department Register. Subsequent USDA officials assigned overseas, however, did not enjoy diplomatic or consular status. This impeded their work, which at that point consisted mainly of collecting, analyzing, and transmitting to Washington time-sensitive market information on agricultural commodities.Clem, The U.S. Agricultural Attaché, His History and His Work
The analytical unit in Washington, by the early 1920s supervised by Leon Estabrook, deputy chief of USDA's Bureau of Agricultural Economics, compiled publications based on reports from the USDA's overseas staff, U.S. consuls abroad, and data collected by the Rome-based International Institute of Agriculture.Letter from Secretary Henry C. Wallace to the Hon. Milton William Shreve, May 3, 1924, in the National Archives, Record Group 16, Records of the Secretary of Agriculture, General Correspondence 1906–1970 (1924), Box 1032.
In 1924, USDA officials Nils Olsen and Louis Guy Michael and Congressman John Ketcham began drafting legislation to create an agricultural attaché service with diplomatic status. The legislation passed the House multiple times, but it did not pass the Senate until 1930, in part due to opposition from then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Hoover, however, eventually supported the legislation to garner support of the farm bloc during his presidential campaign.Papers of Nils Olsen and Reminiscences of Leslie A. Wheeler Accordingly, the Foreign Agricultural Service was created by the Foreign Agricultural Service Act of 1930 (46 Stat. 497), which President Herbert Hoover signed into law on June 5, 1930.
The law stipulated that the FAS consist of overseas USDA officials. The USDA also created a Foreign Agricultural Service Division within the Bureau of Agricultural Economics to serve as the FAS's headquarters staff in Washington, D.C., naming Asher Hobson, a noted economist and political scientist, as its first head. The 1930 Act explicitly granted the USDA's overseas officials diplomatic status and the right to the diplomatic title attaché. In short order, FAS posted additional staff overseas, to Marseille, Pretoria, Belgrade, Sydney, and Kobe, in addition to existing staff in London, Buenos Aires, Berlin, and Shanghai. In Washington, Hobson hired Lazar Volin, a Russian émigré, as the agency's first D.C.-based regional analyst, to specialize in the study of Russia as a competitor to U.S. agriculture.
International trade policy
In 1934, Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which stipulated that the President must consult with the Secretary of Agriculture when negotiating tariff reductions for agricultural commodities. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace delegated this responsibility to the Foreign Agricultural Service Division, and thus began the FAS's role in formulation and implementation of international trade policy.Organization and Functions of the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations The FAS led agricultural tariff negotiations, first concluding a new tariff agreement with Cuba, followed by Belgium, Haiti, Sweden, Brazil and Colombia. By 1939, new agricultural tariffs were in place with 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States' largest agricultural trading partner.Progress in tariff negotiations is documented in the annual Report of the Secretary of Agriculture for the years 1935 -1939.
This new responsibility spurred a change in field reporting from overseas offices. To negotiate tariff agreements, the FAS needed comprehensive information on the domestic agricultural policies of trading partners, and the primary source of this information was the agency's field offices abroad. Thus, in addition to traditional commodity reporting, the attachés and commissioners were called on to add policy analysis to their portfolios.Report of the Secretary of Agriculture, 1935, p. 6.
On December 1, 1938, the Foreign Agricultural Service Division was upgraded, made directly subordinate to the Secretary, and renamed simply the Foreign Agricultural Service. On July 1, 1939, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered all diplomatic personnel, including the agricultural attachés and commissioners, transferred to the Department of State.Reorganization Plan No. II The Foreign Agricultural Service was abolished, and its headquarters staff was renamed the Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations (OFAR).Secretary's Memorandum 825, June 30, 1939 At that time the Director of Foreign Agricultural Relations, Leslie A. Wheeler, was appointed by executive order to the Board of the Foreign Service and the Board of Examiners, an acknowledgement of OFAR's status as a foreign affairs agency.National Archives, Record Group 16, General Correspondence of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, 170/6/34/1, Box 3024, and also Reminiscences of Leslie A. Wheeler.
Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations
OFAR began handling food aid in 1941 when President Roosevelt and the Congress authorized $1.35 billion of food assistance to Great Britain. During this period OFAR also led negotiations that resulted in creation of the International Wheat Council, and began assisting Latin American countries to develop their agriculture. This latter effort was related to the need for strategic commodities as World War II loomed, as well as the need to tie South America closer to the Allies and thereby to keep Nazi Germany from gaining a foothold in the New World.National Archives, Record Group 16, Records of the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, General Correspondence, 1906–75, Foreign Relations (1940), Box 87. Memorandum for the Secretary, June 25, 1940, "Re: Need for clearer publicity on Inter-American cartel," from Mordecai Ezekial During World War II, OFAR analyzed food availability in both allied and enemy countries, and promoted the stockpiling of 100 million bushels (2.7 million metric tons) of wheat for feeding refugees after the anticipated end of the war.Reminiscences of Leslie A. Wheeler
After the war OFAR was instrumental in carrying out land reform in Japan and offering agricultural technical assistance under the Marshall Plan and the Point Four Program. By 1953, OFAR had roughly 400 agricultural specialists working on development programs in 27 foreign countries. OFAR also continued food aid programs, particularly using the Agricultural Act of 1949's authorities to donate surplus commodities. The intent of these efforts was first, to combat communism; second, to promote export sales of U.S. agricultural products; and third, to improve diets in foreign countries through extension of technical assistance and technology transfer."The United States Farmer and the World Around Him", speech by John J. Haggerty, Director of Foreign Agricultural Relations, contained in the Journal of Farm Economics, December 1952
At this point OFAR directed the work of overseas technical assistance programs while the Department of State directed the work of the agricultural attachés. Frictions began to develop as the Department of State began to deny USDA requests for information from the attachés, leading to pressure from both agricultural producer groups and influential congressmen for the attachés to be returned to USDA control.Memorandum by Fred J. Rossiter, Assistant Administrator, Foreign Agricultural Service, January 26, 1954
OFAR participated actively with the Department of State in negotiating the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed in 1947 and expanded through subsequent negotiation rounds, although agriculture was not a major focus until the Uruguay Round of negotiations. At the same time, OFAR was heavily involved in founding the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, with Director of Foreign Agricultural Relations Leslie A. Wheeler playing a particularly instrumental role.
FAS is reconstituted On March 10, 1953, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson abolished OFAR and reconstituted the Foreign Agricultural Service.Secretary's Memorandum 1320, Supplement 1, March 10, 1953 In April 1954, FAS handed off national security–related technical assistance to the International Cooperation Administration (USAID's forerunner) and began to concentrate on foreign market development for U.S. agricultural commodities, signaling a radical shift in the agency's focus.Memorandum of Understanding between USDA and Department of State on "Conduct of Technical Assistance Overseas," April 14, 1954, and also Memorandum "To All Employees of the Foreign Agricultural Service" from acting Administrator Clayton E. Whipple, November 19, 1953 On September 1, 1954, following passage of H.R. 8033 (P.L. 83-690), the agricultural attachés were transferred back from State Department to FAS.
In the same year, Congress passed Public Law 480 (P.L. 83-480), the Food for Peace Act, which became the backbone of FAS's food aid and market development efforts. Agricultural attachés began negotiating agreements for concessional sale of U.S. farm commodities to foreign countries on terms of up to 30 years and in their own local currencies. The Act was uncommon in that it allowed for the agreements made by the FAS to bypass the normal advice and consent of the U.S. Senate.
In 1955, FAS began signing cooperative agreements with groups representing American producers of specific commodities to expand foreign demand. The first such agreement was signed with the National Cotton Council. This activity came to be called the Market Development Cooperator Program, and the groups themselves to be called "cooperators".Howard, et al, Partners in Developing Farm Markets Overseas