Doggy’s Diner was a participating restaurant in the “Taste of America” promotion. Pictured here are Tommy Aoki, senior marketing specialist, Agricultural Trade Office; Fred Klose, executive director, California Ag Export Council; Koichi Yoshiike, owner, Doggy’s Diner and a member of his staff.

Japanese customers savored restaurant dining created with quality American food ingredients as part of the first-ever “Taste of America” promotion hosted this month by the U.S. Agricultural Trade Office (ATO) in Tokyo. Read more »

Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Todd Haymore discussed aquaculture with business developers outside of Shanghai, China. Haymore was a key member of a delegation from Virginia who recently embarked on a trade mission to Asia, which was supported by Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) employees assigned to the region.

Helping American farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses gain and maintain access to international markets is one of the most important roles of USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). Read more »

With assistance from USDA’s Market Access Program (MAP) and working with Food Export-Midwest, a Milwaukee-based company has expanded its access to the Asian market for its brand of specialty cookies. Nikki’s Cookies & Confections has been baking a full line of shortbreads, chocolate layered cookies and holiday specialty products for 25 years. The company’s export success was recently recognized in the National Export Strategy Report, an annual update on the National Export Initiative progress. Under this initiative President Obama set a goal of doubling overall U.S. exports by the end of 2014. Read more »

More than 250 servings of U.S. steak were served on May 15 as part of USMEF’s relief efforts.

The devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11 claimed the lives of over 13,000 people and left nearly 150,000 homeless. Read more »

During the third day of his visit to Japan, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack had another packed day – starting with a successful bilateral meeting with his Japanese counterpart, and concluding with a series of events commemorating the 50^th anniversary of a 1959 ‘hog lift’ in which Iowa farmers sent 36 hogs to Yamanashi, Japan. Read more »

This week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack left the beauty of a cherry blossom adorned nation’s capital to travel to the origin of the beautiful pink and white flowered trees—Japan (where one finds even larger crowds of tourists, amateur photographers, and general admirers of the cherry blossom trees than along Washington DC’s tidal basin this time of the year). Vilsack is in Japan to highlight the outstanding partnership that exists between the United States and Japan, and to promote U.S. agricultural exports, as part of President Obama’s efforts to expand U.S. exports under the National Export Initiative. Read more »