The Agricultural Marketing Service includes six commodity programs--Cotton, Dairy, Fruit and Vegetable, Livestock and Seed, Poultry, and Tobacco. The programs employ specialists who provide standardization, grading and market news services for those commodities. They enforce such Federal Laws as the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act and the Federal Seed Act.
AMS commodity programs also oversee marketing agreements and orders, administer research and promotion programs, and purchase commodities for Federal food programs.
Another AMS organization is the Science and Technology Program, which has several functions. It provides centralized scientific support to AMS programs, including laboratory analyses, laboratory quality assurance, coordination of scientific research conducted by other agencies for AMS, and statistical and mathematical consulting services. In addition, the Science and Technology Division's Plant Variety Protection Office issues certificate of protection for new varieties of sexually reproduced plants. The program also conducts a program to collect and analyze data about pesticide residue levels in agricultural commodities. It also administers the Pesticide Recordkeeping program, which requires all certified private applicators of Federally restricted-use pesticide to maintain record of all applications. The records will be put into a data base to help analyze agricultural pesticide use.
AMS' Transportation and Marketing Program brings together a unique combination of traffic managers, engineers, rural policy analysts, international trade specialists, and agricultural marketing specialists to help solve problems of U.S. and world agricultural transportation. The Transportation and Marketing Program works to ensure that there is an efficient transportation system for rural America that begins at the farm gate, moves agricultural and other rural products through the Nation's highways, railroads, airports, and waterways, and into the domestic and international marketplace. The program supplies research and technical information to producers, producer groups, shippers, exporters, rural communities, carriers, government agencies and universities. The program also administers a program involving financial grants to States for marketing improvements. In addition, the division assists in the planning and design of marketing facilities, processes, and methods in cooperation with State and local governments, universities, farmer groups, and other segments of the U.S. food industry. This program enhances the overall effectiveness of the food marketing system, provides better quality products to the consumer at reasonable cost, improves market access for growers with small-to medium-sized farms, and promotes regional economic development.
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