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A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
There are plenty of examples of Market News being used all over the world. Legend has it that Market News reporters were sent to France in the early 1950s to help build a market information system for agricultural products; the agency is said to have provided similar assistance to South Korea in 1960s.

In the 1980s, Market News helped Mexico create its first market information system, which is known as ‘SNIIM’ (Sistema Nacional de Información e Integración de Mercados) today.

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s, Market News teams were involved in technical assistance in Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, and other countries. Poland’s market information system, which was created with assistance from Market News—helped the country meet reporting requirements when joining the European Union.

Current assistance projects are also underway in Bangladesh, Haiti, and a number of Central American countries.

Market News has been very active in the Market Information Organization of the Americas (MIOA), a technical group inaugurated in 2000. The MIOA is a cooperative network of groups and institutions in the Americas responsible for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on markets for agricultural products.

The primary objective is to facilitate the timely and reliable exchange of information and to provide guidelines in the methodology, terminology, and technology used within market information systems. The organization also assists member countries in providing more efficient and uniform capacity training on a hemispheric or regional basis.

Here at Home
There are countless ways the USDA Fruit and Vegetable Market News supports the produce industry. A few of the highlights include providing hundreds of daily market reports filed on a near-real time basis, pricing on three levels (f.o.b. shipping point, wholesale terminal market, and retail reports covering weekly advertised specials), and movement data including shipments, crossings from Mexico, and imports.

Reports are not limited to just fruits and vegetables; others cover truck rates, ornamental crops such as cut flowers, pecans and other tree nuts, honey and beekeeping, apples for processing, apple juice concentrate, and potatoes for processing. All of these reports and information are accessible on the Market News Portal at (www.marketnews.usda.gov/portal/fv).

What’s New at Market News?
New products, varieties, and packages arrive almost daily on U.S. produce markets. Market News moves quickly to capture the particulars of these new items and add them to the hundreds of others reported on at the markets.

At the request of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and marketers of apple juice, Market News created an f.o.b. shipping point price report specifically for apple juice concentrate.

The Exchange wanted to set up a futures contract for apple juice concentrate and needed spot market pricing to support the futures contract. With the help and full cooperation of industry members, the new report has been very successful and the Exchange is now trading apple juice concentrate at a good pace and with solid growth in the number of contracts.