Vegetables and Melons

Vegetables and Melons Briefing Room Background Trade Market Outlook Policy Tomatoes

Overview

The United States trails only China and India in world production of vegetables and melons. During the first half of this decade, U.S. farm cash receipts from the sale of vegetables and melons (including mushrooms) averaged $17.5 billion—17 percent of U.S. crop cash receipts. Annual per capita use of all vegetables and melons averaged 445 pounds (fresh-weight basis) during the first 5 years of the 2000s—a 5-percent increase over a decade earlier. Separate briefing rooms are also available for potatoes and dry beans.

Choose a commodity link below for a brief economic snapshot:

All articles are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. For the most recent information on a commodity, see Vegetables and Melons Outlook.

Features

Vegetables and Melons Outlook is an electronic report, issued every other month in newsletter format, featuring current intelligence and forecasts of changing conditions in the U.S. vegetable and melon sectors. Topics include production, consumption, prices, trade and more.

Price Trends Are Similar for Fruits, Vegetables, and Snack Foods reports that an increase in the price of fruits and vegetables relative to less healthy foods could reduce consumers' incentives to purchase produce and result in less healthy diets. For commonly consumed fresh fruits and vegetables, analysis of price trends reveals a price decline similar to that of dessert and snack foods. This suggests the price of a healthy diet has not changed relative to an unhealthy one (03/08).

Recommended Readings

Are Lower Income Households Willing and Able To Budget for Fruits and Vegetables? analyzes the relationship between income and fruit and vegetable consumption by low-income households. Discrepancies between actual consumption and Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommendations are fueling interest in ways to promote more intake of fruits and vegetables, especially among low-income households. Could small adjustments to the buying power of low-income households increase their purchases of fruits and vegetables? (01/08)

Increased U.S. Imports of Fresh Fruit and Vegetables have allowed U.S. consumers to eat more fruit and vegetables and enjoy year-round access to various fresh produce. Primary suppliers are the North American Free Trade Agreement region for fresh vegetables, the Southern Hemisphere countries for off-season fresh fruit, and equatorial countries for bananas (09/07).

Fruit and Vegetable Backgrounder describes the economic characteristics of the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry, providing supply, demand, and policy background for an industry that accounts for nearly a third of U.S. crop cash receipts and a fifth of U.S. agricultural exports. A variety of challenges face this complex and diverse industry in both domestic and international markets, ranging from immigration reform and its effect on labor availability to international competitiveness (04/06).

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Recommended Data Products

Vegetables at a Glance contains a popular table summarizing key data on the vegetable industry.

Most recent tables from Vegetable and Melons Outlook contain the latest data on fresh and processing per capita use, acreage, production, prices, cash receipts, and U.S. trade, as well as data on potatoes, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, dry edible beans, and dry peas and lentils.

Vegetables and Melons Yearbook contains 165 Excel tables, detailing 25 years of annual and monthly data for U.S. farm acreage, production, prices, trade, per-capita use, and more.

Procurement and Contracting by Organic Handlers provides information on procurement practices and use of contracts by certified organic handlers (packers, shippers, manufacturers, processors, brokers, and distributors). Procurement information includes basic firm characteristics, their purchasing habits, and their relationship with suppliers. Contracting information includes the use of written and verbal contracts with their suppliers (11/07).

Commodity and Food Elasticities Database allows queriable searches of income, expenditure, and own- and cross-price elasticities for specific commodities and countries, which can be ranked and sorted. The elasticities are mainly from U.S. research on consumer demand published in working papers, dissertations, and peer-reviewed journals. The greatest number of demand studies are for vegetables, fruits, meat, and grocery products in the United States and China (09/07).

U.S. Watermelon Industry Includes time series data on U.S. and State acreage, yield, production, prices and value; per capita consumption; U.S. trade; world production and trade; and other data on truck freight charges, irrigation, and characteristics of watermelon farms (03/08).

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Related Briefing Rooms

Potatoes
Dry Edible Beans
Fruit and Tree Nuts
Food Market Systems in the U.S.
Organic Agriculture

Questions and Answers

What is the U.S. per capita use of vegetables and melons? Find the answer to this and other commonly asked questions about U.S. vegetable and melon markets.

Related Links

Links to other sites with economic information about vegetables and melons.