I made a day trip to Washington yesterday to meet with the folks in USDA who are in charge of buying and distributing commodities to a host of government feeding programs. It was a long hard trip...I was on the road at 4:30 AM and got back about midnight. That said it was well worth the trip.
Government purchases peaked in 1992-93 when Charles Hatcher, Congressman from Georgia"s second congressional district, was Chairman of the House Ag Subcommittee which oversaw these programs.
We had a very cordial and informative meeting. We stressed the value of peanut butter in feeding programs. We are really cheap when you consider the protein value. We are also a food which is good and good for you.
The folks we met with had some pretty solid suggestions as to how we can get government purchases increased. The system is a bottom up system with requests for peanut butter starting locally.
I really think if we do some pretty serious promotion in this area may have some of the greatest potential for consumption increases of anything we can do. We are talking a lot of money and a lot of pounds of peanuts if we are successful.
No comments:
Post a Comment