DA goes on roadshow in US

The Department of Agriculture’s Agribusiness and Marketing Assistance Service (AMAS) is kicking off this weekend a nine-day, three-city roadshow in California to promote consumer food and items beverage in the US market.

The DA said 19 companies, mostly members of the Philippine Food Processor and Exporters Organization, are taking part to push their products.

These include calamansi juice, chocolates, champorado, noodles, pastries, snack food, frozen native delicacies, biscuits, cookies, polvoron, pastillas, coffee, herbal food supplements, dried or processed fish, and coconut products.

According to the DA, the companies will participate in the “3rd Outbound Business Mission,” also called ‘Barkadahan 2013,’ which is aimed primarily at Filipinos and Asian-Americans.

According to Leandro Gazin, director of the DA-AMAS, the roadshow consists of an agriculture festival, business matching and food fair.

The tour will cover San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, from Aug. 10-11.

The first two days will be spent at the 20th Annual Pistahan Parade and Festival in San Francisco where the products will be exhibited.

A business matching forum is slated on Aug. 14 in Los Angeles, where “dozens of US food importers and distributors are expected to attend.”

Finally, the Philippine exporters will be at the Barkadahan Food Fair in San Diego on Aug. 17-18  where there will be promotion, sales and sampling of various products.

According to the National Statistics Office, the US market accounted for 14 percent of total Philippine exports in the January-May period.

Shipments to the US were valued at a total of $2.96 billion during those five months, which was a decline of 13.3 percent year-on-year.