Texas Organic Export Market Potential

Spring of 2022, the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) put out a call for applications for the Agricultural Development: Agricultural Commodity Export Support (ACES) Pilot Program for Texas commodity agricultural trade organizations, agricultural cooperatives, and agricultural commodity or producer organizations that are interested in conducting export activities to further expand the international market presence of Texas agricultural commodities.

The TDA Organic Advisory Board and the board’s diverse membership is a great sounding board especially for new ideas. My discussions with Board members help me to know that there was a possible export market for organic produce but there really wasn’t much of an idea of where to begin. I reached out to Dante Galeazzi, Executive Director of Texas International Produce Association (TIPA) to see if they might be interested in partnering with us (Texas A&M AgriLife and CNAS) to submit a grant to do this investigation. Dante is a very positive person and is super to work with, so of course the answer was yes!

I work with a couple of outstanding economists in Dr. Luis Ribera and Landyn Young and they took the challenge to help put the grant together with Dante and TIPA and it was funded by the Texas Department of Agriculture. The overall purpose of this grant project with TIPA was to evaluate the export potential of selected Texas organic commodities and the proposal included these top objectives.

Objective 1. Identify the top five Texas organic fruits and/or vegetables with the largest potential for the export markets.

Objective 2. Conduct a market study of selected Texas organic commodities using secondary data available from the U.S. government and from other countries’ governmental sources. 

Objective 3.  Identify top three or four markets for selected Texas commodities

Objective 4. Analyze export trends from US/Texas and main competitors looking for opportunities to access and/or expand market share for the selected Texas organic commodities.

Objective 5. Identify and analyze general border measures and trade barriers such as SPS requirements, product form, TBTs such as packaging/labeling requirements, and import tariffs, among others to evaluate the competitiveness of selected Texas commodities.

Objective 6.  Develop recommendations on how Texas can increase access to foreign market and/or increase market share.

Fast forward to this summer and the work has been done! I am quite impressed with their work and happy to share it with you. Below are the publications developed by Dr. Ribera and Landyn Young on these crops with the most potential in the organic export markets. Please take a look at the markets and the potential and let us know your thoughts!