You may not even realize this, but you and everyone else flying into the United States pay a $5.00 federal agriculture fee, as part of your airline ticket (additionally you and other international travelers pay a $5.50 customs fee and a $7.00 immigration fee).

The money is used to fund inspection stations and Ag. Dept. personnel who examine plants and animals coming into the U.S. via aircraft, ships, trains, you name it. The whole point is safety: inspections help to reduce the risk of pests or disease entering this country.

But international air traffic, like all traffic, is down — by a whopping 15+% — so, agricultural funding is down, too. And they need more money.

So starting this Thursday, you’ll notice a boost in that agricultural fee — or will you? Keep reading…

Beginning Oct. 1^st, an “interim” boost of fifty cents will be added to that $5.00 agricultural fee for all international passengers entering into the U.S.

Now is fifty cents going to make much of a difference? Actually, yes.

Consider that the approximate number of international tickets sold for flights to the U.S. for this Thursday (1-Oct) — when the new fee goes into effect — is about 220,000. That means that little fifty cent bump alone will bring in an additional $110,000 to the Dept. of Agriculture on that single day.

Not a vast sum, perhaps — but it adds up: $3.3 million more a month, and just under $40 million more a year.

By the way — note again that this extra $.50 is an “interim” fee. However, these days “interim” seems to mean the same thing as “permanent”. After all, many new fees the past year were supposed to be interim — at least, the airlines indicated as much, saying they were a reaction to the high price of fuel. Then along came the financial meltdown, and those fees are still with us.

The federal government is however, taking comments on the agricultural fee, and if you’d like to make yourself heard, you can do so online, through Nov. 27, 2009 (the formal title for the fee increase is “User Fees for Agricultural Quarantine and Inspection Services”, ID #APHIS-2009-0048-0001).

Final thought: it sure seems like we’re sticking it to the international travelers these days — some of you will recall my recent “Sticking it to Innbound non U.S. Travelers” post on a Congressional proposal to hang a $10 fee on international tourists to the U.S. — money that would then be used in part to — boost international tourism.