The U.S. Meat Export Federation’s (USMEF) export market development programs provide positive impacts on imports of U.S. red meats, says Harry Kaiser, a Cornell University economist.

He recently completed a study of USMEF’s foreign marketing efforts, commissioned by USMEF to quantify the returns that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service and the beef, pork, corn and soybean checkoff programs receive from their investments in USMEF’s export market development programs. The independent study was funded by USDA.

“Basically what we found is very good news,” Kaiser told attendees at USMEF’s 35th Anniversary Strategic Planning Conference in Tucson, AZ. “The U.S. Meat Export Federation’s beef and pork market development programs were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on imports of U.S. red meat in all of the eight markets that were analyzed.”

The economic model showed that combined producer and USDA marketing expenditures increased U.S. red meat exports by more than 30% per year.

“If we compare the results of this study to the results of 16 published studies for other commodities, the bottom line is that these USMEF programs have had a larger impact on import demand than the majority of similar programs for other commodities,” he adds.

More details of Kaiser’s study can be found at http://www.usmef.org/news-statistics/press-releases/new-study-finds-favorable-return-on-investment-in-usmef%e2%80%99s-market-development-programs/.