Debra Tropp spent more than 26 years at the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service’s Transportation and Marketing Program, retiring from Federal service at the end of January 2019. During her tenure at AMS, Ms. Tropp devoted much of her attention to identifying emerging marketing opportunities for suppliers of locally and regionally-produced food in wholesale marketing channels, so that smaller/mid-sized producers could diversify their customer base, expand their sales volumes and improve their cash flow. She also played a key role in developing and overseeing the development of research projects and guidance material -- aimed at a small/mid-size producer audience -- that shared practical insights about market requirements/preferences and the economic benefits associated with changes in operational and marketing practices within the food supply chain. Over the course of her career, Ms. Tropp served in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility, including Agricultural Economist, interim Staff Officer for the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program (a competitive grant program that supports market research projects), Team Leader and Chief of the Farmers Market and Direct Farm Marketing Research Branch, and finally, Deputy Director of AMS's Marketing Service Program, which focuses on local and regional food system research and development. Most recently, she served as the primary editor for the AMS-sponsored report "The Economics of Local Food Systems: A Toolkit to Guide Community Discussions, Assessments and Choices (March 2016), and as a member of the four-person task force that framed and produced the Federal Reserve/USDA book "Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities (August 2017).