Agricultural Outlook January/February 2002

Jeanne McLaughlin, executive editor

Agricultural Outlook No. (288) January 2002

About this magazine

AO is the main source of USDA's farm and food price forecasts. AO emphasizes the short-term outlook for all major areas of the agricultural economy. It also presents long-term analyses of such issues as U.S. agricultural policy, trade forecasts and export-market development, food safety, the environment, and farm financial institutions. Each issue includes 25 pages of data on individual commodities, the general economy, U.S. farm trade, farm income, production expenses, input use, prices received and paid by farmers, per capita food consumption, and related issues. AO is published 10 times per year by the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Materials may be reprinted without permission. Contents have been approved by the World Agricultural Outlook Board. Release of summary for the March 2002 issue: February 20, 2002. Release of complete text-only version: February 21.

In this report ...

Articles are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Contents, 65 kb

In This Issue, 40 kb

Agricultural Economy

• U.S. Recession, Slow World Growth Leave Mixed Picture for Farm & Rural Economy—By November 2001 it was official. The U.S. economy was in recession—and had been since March. The recession ended a decade-long expansion, the most durable on record. World economic growth—both in 2001 and 2002—is expected to be sluggish, posting the lowest back-to-back growth rates since the world debt crisis of 1981-82. David Torgerson (202) 694-5334, 93 kb.

Briefs

• U.S. Sheep Industry Continues to Consolidate—The U.S. sheep industry continues a long decline marked by shrinkage in inventories, prices, and revenues. The industry also is affected by heightened concerns about sheep-borne animal diseases, as well as recent removal of a tariff-rate quota (TRQ) on imported lamb meat from Australia and New Zealand. On the positive side, domestic lamb and mutton consumption has held fairly steady for the past decade, while production in major lamb exporting countries is on the decline. Keithly Jones (202) 694-5172, 75 kb.

• Tobacco Industry Downsizing, Restructuring—A recent dramatic shift from auctioning to contract selling in the tobacco market is changing the character of the industry. By contracting directly with leaf producers, cigarette manufacturers have more influence over which qualities of leaf are available. In addition, already-existing restrictions on smoking areas and advertising and growing consciousness of the health risks of smoking are having a long-term effect on the industry. Thomas Capehart (202) 694-5311, 107 kb.

World Agriculture & Trade

• Aligning U.S. Farm Policy with World Trade Commitments—The U.S. and other countries made commitments in 1994 under the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) to reduce the amount of trade-distorting domestic subsidies provided to producers, to reduce export subsidies, and to increase import access to domestic markets. U.S. support to producers under current farm programs is expected to remain below its ceiling, but increases in support under new programs, if not carefully crafted to utilize exemptions, could present a problem for compliance with URAA commitments. Frederick J. Nelson (202) 694-5326, 267 kb.

• Pressures for Change in Eastern Europe's Livestock Sectors—Twelve years after the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the meat and dairy processing sectors of CEE countries are undergoing rapid concentration and modernization. The process is most evident in Poland and Hungary, but similar trends are evident in all the CEE countries. Restructuring has been accelerated by pending CEE accession to the European Union (EU), both because of pressure to meet EU sanitary standards and because of assistance provided by the EU to the food processing industry. Nancy Cochrane (202) 694-5143, 90 kb.

Food & Marketing

• Traceability for Food Marketing & Safety: What's the Next Step?—Traceability systems are recordkeeping systems used primarily to help keep foods with different attributes separate. Traceability is established when information on a particular attribute of a food product is recorded, from creation through marketing. Food suppliers and government have several motives for documenting the flow of food and food products—and for differentiating foods by characteristics and source. However, the area where traceability seems to draw the most attention lately—government-mandated tracking of genetically engineered crops and food—is not among the practical or efficient uses of traceability. Elise Golan (202) 694-5424, 92 kb.

Special Article

• Public-Sector Plant Breeding in a Privatizing World—Since 1970, the balance between public and private plant breeding activity in industrialized countries has shifted from the public to the private sector. Traditionally, the private sector has relied on public-sector research results. Today this is no longer the case; the public sector instead may utilize private-sector research results in some areas of biotechnology. Funding mechanisms, as well as institutional cooperation and competition, are often complex. This has led to debate on appropriate roles for public- and private-sector activity. Paul W. Heisey (202) 694-5526, 108 kb.

Agricultural Outlook Forum 2002—(Updated) Program at a Glance, 115 kb

Statistical Indicators, 176 kb

Index 1997-2001, 97 kb

Entire issue, 785 kb

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Updated date: January 2002