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.

To conduct the study, the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust brought in assistant professor Joshua Stoll and his team at the University of Maine’s Social Oceans Lab to assess past USDA grant funding administered through the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Food and Nutrition Services, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and Rural Development. 

For the funding analysis, Stoll’sgroup reviewed USDA funding data from 2018-2023 and created a special coding program to help sort and filter grant projects based on key terms, such as “seafood,” “fisheries,” and “aquaculture”. Their final database included 146,720 USDA grants totaling $31.2 billion over the six years studied.

Of that total, only 768 grants of $261.7 million were awarded to seafood-related projects, while while $30.97 billion went to other segments of the food system. 

Other findings from their analysis showed:

–      USDA funding was primarily directed at production-related activities in the supply chain (48 percent).

–      Businesses were the most commonly funded entities (53 percent) followed by universities (32 percent). 

–      Maine, Washington, Alaska, and Mississippi received the most seafood-related grants, while Maryland, Washington, and Maine received the most funding in terms of dollar value. 

–      USDA grant funding increased by 161.5 percent between 2018-2023, while the number of grants stayed fairly stable. Some of the increase was attributed to congressional funding associated with covid-19 pandemic relief programs, the authors noted.

The researchers conducted15 interviews with 19 people, representing 18 USDA grants that

were focused on fisheries and aquaculture. The interviews helped single out common problems facing seafood projects, including what seafood is eligible for USDA grants, wild capture fisheries that are not eligible, “misalignment between grant requirements and fishing practices, and misinformation within the USDA about the seafood sector and how it functions.”

"The purpose of our analysis was to help inform broader discussions about seafood and its role in our nation’s food systems. There continues to be a lot of uncertainty around when, if, and howthe seafood sector can access USDA funding, and our work brings attention to some of the real and perceived barriers that exist,” said professor Stoll, at the University of Maine.

“Finding ways to strengthen our country’s fishing and seafood industry, while also building more vibrant food systems, has the potential to benefit everyone.”

Sponsors of the study are working with members of Congress to make the USDA programs and funding more accessible to the seafood sector. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, in 2023   introduced the National Seafood Supply Act of 2023, which would establish an Office of Seafood Policy and Program Integration at the USDA. In June 2025, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Angus King, I-Maine, reintroduced the Working Waterfronts Act which would make seafood projects eligible for USDA’s AMS grant programs, addressing the issue of frequent ambiguity and inconsistencies in the USDA’s communications around seafood eligibility. 

“We hope that this new information will help advance the Trump Administration’s commitment to make America’s seafood more competitive and bring attention to tangible ways that this Administration and Congress can make the USDA’s funding opportunities equally accessible to all domestic food producers,” said Behnken.