The federal government has awarded more than $5 million in grants to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to help the state agency find new ways and new places to sell fish.
Of the federal money, over $4 million is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Regional Agriculture Promotion Program, known as RAPP. That money will be used in specific areas of the state to help improve international markets, said Greg Smith, an ASMI spokesperson.
“The timing of the RAPP funds is well-aligned with the Alaska seafood industry’s needs to combat numerous global economic pressures. While these funds will help ASMI grow our international efforts, they will also allow us to shift our other limited fund sources toward the U.S. market, where consumer demand for seafood has fallen dramatically and is sorely in need of marketing support.” said ASMI Executive Director Jeremy Woodrow.
The other $1 million, in two $500,000 pieces, is from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s grant program. One project seeks to expand Alaska’s presence in the U.S. pet food market. The market uses about $7 billion in agricultural products, but only $893 million of that is seafood, according to ASMI.
The second project is for study and possible replication of Icelandic seafood industry practices that employ value-added processes to create diverse fish products, including nonfood products.
The announcement came less than two weeks after Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a $10 million legislative appropriation for the marketing agency.
The federal grant money is not a perfect match for the vetoed state funding. Aside from being only half the total, the federal grants are directed for specific purposes rather than available for broader ASMI purposes.
ASMI is typically funded by a combination of contributions from the seafood industry, which are based on a percentage of the value of fish commercially harvested in a prior year, and the federal government. In most recent years, ASMI has not been funded through the state operating budget. However, the Legislature appropriated $5 million to the agency for the prior fiscal year, which ended on June 30, and Dunleavy declined to veto that. It was the first legislative appropriation to ASMI since 2018.
Industry contributions to ASMI generally run about $6 million to $16 million a year, while federal funds in recent years have ranged from about $6 million to about $13 million.
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