On 21 February US President Barack Obama signed a memorandum entitled 'Driving Innovation and Creating Jobs in Rural America through Biobased and Sustainable Product Procurement.' The BioPreferred Program, is intended to increase federal procurement of biobased products, which will promote rural economic development, create new jobs, and provide new markets for farm commodities.

According to the memorandum, the federal government, with leadership from the United States Department of Agriculture, has made significant strides in implementing the Program. The goal of the memorandum is to ensure that agencies effectively execute federal procurement requirements for biobased products. The memorandum directs agencies to take a number of steps intended to increase federal procurement of biobased and other sustainable products.

These include ensuring that 95 percent of applicable new contract actions for products and services advance sustainable acquisition, including biobased acquisition, where such products and services meet agency performance requirements. 64 categories of biobased products for preferred federal procurement, representing an estimated 9,000 individual products have already been designated and there are efforts to increase this by 50 percent within one year of the date of the memorandum.

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