National Fisherman
July 22nd 2025
By NF Staff
Of $31.2 billion in grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s marketing service during 2018 to 2023, $261.7 million went to seafood-related projects – just 0.5 percent of all USDA funding for food supply investments.
A research team recently published those findings in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, titled Fish, funding, and food systems: a review of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent history of grant funding in support of the seafood sector (2018-2023). The authors call the study “the first empirical study looking at the USDA’s investment in American seafood since President Trump issued Executive Order 14276, ‘Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness.’”
The authors wrote that they found is no single explanation for why seafood projects gets such a small fraction of USDA grant funding, compared to other U.S. food production sectors. But they did find “numerous opportunities for increasing the USDA’s investment in American seafood.”
The research was funded by the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT), as part of a larger project to identify ways USDA grant funding could be made more accessible for the fishing and seafood industry.
“Alaska’s fishermen harvest some of the healthiest and highest quality food on the planet and supply 60 percent of our country’s seafood production. Yet, our fishing organizations have struggled to secure USDA grant funding for a variety of projects despite being aligned with the USDA’s goals. Seafood is generally a square peg in a round hole when it comes to USDA funding opportunities,” said Linda Behnken, a commercial fisherman, board president of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust and executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association.
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