The Specialty Crops Program Newsletter is an email notification service that the AMS Specialty Crops Program uses to send out program updates to the produce industry. We send an average of 4-8 messages a year on a range of topics related to specialty crops at USDA, including regulatory updates, marketing orders, research & promotion boards and notices about upcoming activities.
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Release No.: 019-18
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2018 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) today announced the launch of a new electronic data platform to deliver market price information to the commodities industry. The new web-based platform, Market Analysis and Reporting Services (MARS), uses state-of-the-art technology to present detailed data sets in a more customer-focused way to better support competitive markets for producers and help stabilize food prices for American families.
Please join us as we explore the many new tools MARS has to offer to meet your data needs. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will host a webinar to show you some of the great features and tools provided through MARS. Data users can create unique reports, data sets, output, and visualizations. MARS uses state-of-the-art technology to better serve customers by creating one easy-to-use tool for users to explore timely, accurate, and unbiased data.
Teleconference focus group meeting for swine and pork stakeholders was held on January 17, 2018.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced today that it is reopening the comment period for the proposed revisions to the United States Standards for Grades of Pork Carcasses (pork standards) at the request of industry organizations.
Release No: 151-17
64.5 billion pounds of fruit and vegetables, and 44.4 billion eggs graded/inspected domestically
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21, 2017--The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) today announced the agency facilitated the export of more than $3.8 billion of American produced agricultural products in Fiscal Year 2017 through its Export Verification (EV), grading and classing programs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced today that it is updating the voluntary U.S. Standards for Grades of Carcass Beef. USDA quality grades are used by companies to provide information to purchasers about meat’s tenderness, juiciness, and flavor and are a major factor in determining the value of beef and live cattle.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has revised the Minimum Quality and Handling standards for domestic and imported peanuts marketed in the United States.
This action relaxes the allowance for damaged kernels in farmers’ stock peanuts when determining segregation and grade. The change aligns the incoming standards with recent changes relaxing the outgoing quality standards.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) today invited public comment on proposed revision to the U.S. Standards for Grades of Pork Carcasses. The proposed revision would assist pork producers and processors by better aligning the grades with consumer expectations.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced new U.S. Standards for Grades of Frozen Onions, establishing grade levels “A,” “B,” and “Substandard,” as well as Acceptable Quality Levels (AQL) tolerances and acceptance numbers for each quality factor as defined for each grade level. The notice was published in the Federal Register on Aug. 22, 2017.