ERS Charts of Note
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Friday, February 2, 2024
USDA identifies farmers and ranchers as limited resource (LR) producers as those who, for two consecutive years, operate a farm with gross farm sales less than $180,300 (in 2020 dollars) and have total household income either below the Federal poverty level for a family of four or less than half of the median household income in the county where they live. Between 2017 and 2020, 9.3 percent of all U.S. farms had an LR principal operator, according to the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). Of the remaining farms, 76.3 percent had farm sales low enough to meet LR status, but did not meet other requirements, while 14.3 percent had gross farm sales above the LR threshold. The ARMS data also reveal that the share of farms that were LR varied geographically, with lower proportions in the Plains region and higher proportions in the Atlantic and West regions. There were also within-region differences in the share of farms that were LR farms, such as the Midwest, where 4 percent of farms in Iowa and Illinois were LR while Missouri had roughly 12 percent. This highlights differences in the scale of production, as well as differences in off-farm income and county median incomes. ARMS is the only nationally representative survey that collects the information needed to determine whether the principal operator on a farm meets the LR criteria. This chart is found in the USDA, Economic Research Service’s report An Overview of Farms Operated by Socially Disadvantaged, Women, and Limited Resource Farmers and Ranchers in the United States, published in February 2024.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Drought imposes significant costs on the U.S. agricultural sector, particularly for livestock producers who rely on precipitation to grow forage. USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) provides payments to livestock producers whose pastures and rangeland are impacted by drought through the Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP). The LFP was established by the 2008 Farm Bill and uses eligibility criteria based on county-level drought conditions reported by the U.S. Drought Monitor. FSA annually sets species-specific per head LFP payment rates designed to cover about 60 percent of monthly feed/forage costs for livestock. Livestock species eligible for LFP payments include traditional livestock, such as beef and dairy cattle, as well as more exotic varieties, such as reindeer and ostriches. Between 2008 and 2022, the program disbursed more than $12 billion (in 2022 dollars) of payments to livestock producers. Counties with the largest aggregate LFP payments per 1,000 head of livestock are concentrated primarily in the Western, Southern, and Central United States, where drought conditions are generally more severe and common. About 20 percent of counties in the continental United States received no LFP payments between 2008 and 2022. These counties are primarily located in urban regions and the relatively more humid Eastern United States. This chart was drawn from the USDA, Economic Research Service report The Stocking Impact and Financial-Climate Risk of the Livestock Forage Disaster Program, published January 2024.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
U.S. policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have encouraged the production of biofuels—fuels derived from crops and animal fats. The policy framework has supported expansion in the production of biomass-based diesel. Biomass-based diesel includes biodiesel and renewable diesel, which now captures the second-largest share of biofuel production, after ethanol. With vegetable oils as the main feedstock in biomass-based diesel production, demand for major vegetable oils (soybean, corn, and canola) for the 2022/23 marketing year (October-September) reached a high of 19.1 billion pounds, up nearly 4.5 billion pounds from 2021/22. Use of soybean oil accounts for more than 40 percent of total feedstocks used for biomass-based diesel production. It increased from 5 billion pounds in 2014/15 to 12.5 billion pounds in 2022/23. Corn and canola oils also are increasingly used in biofuel production, though in lesser amounts. To date, U.S. production of soybean, corn, and canola oils has not been sufficient to cover the rise in domestic use. Rising domestic demand is supported by increasing imports, which now supply more than 29 percent of domestic vegetable oil consumption. This chart is drawn from USDA, Economic Research Service’s Oil Crops Outlook, December 2023.
Monday, January 29, 2024
In 2022, farm establishments received 14.9 cents per dollar spent by consumers on domestically produced food for the sale of farm commodities. However, this amount, called the farm share, does not all remain on the farm. Farm commodity production requires many inputs from nonfarm establishments. Some inputs, such as fertilizer, seed, and equipment, are supplied by establishments in the Agribusiness industry group. These inputs to farm commodity production cost 2.1 cents per dollar spent on food in 2022. Inputs from industry groups such as Energy and Transportation are also used on the farm and throughout the food supply chain. In 2022, the cost of these inputs at the farm level was 4.9 cents per dollar spent on food. The remaining 7.9 cents from the farm share (just more than half) are for farm production, which is equal to the value added by farm establishments through their use of labor, equipment, and materials. The remaining 85.1 cents per dollar spent on food in 2022 went to industries to get food to various points of purchase after it left the farm. This portion is called the marketing share. This chart was drawn from the Amber Waves data feature “ERS Food Dollar’s Three Series Show Distributions of U.S. Food Production Costs,” published in December 2023.
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Food-at-home prices increased by 5.0 percent in 2023, much lower than the growth rate in 2022 (11.4 percent) but still double the historical annual average growth from 2003 to 2022 (2.5 percent). All product categories shown grew more slowly in 2023 compared with 2022. Food price growth slowed in 2023 as economy-wide inflationary pressures, supply chain issues, and wholesale food prices eased from 2022. In 2023, prices for fats and oils grew the fastest (9.0 percent), followed by sugar and sweets (8.7 percent), and cereals and bakery products (8.4 percent). Pork prices declined 1.2 percent in 2023, and prices for several categories grew more slowly than their historical averages, including beef and veal (3.6 percent), eggs (1.4 percent), fresh vegetables (0.9 percent), fresh fruits (0.7 percent), and fish and seafood (0.3 percent). Egg price growth receded in 2023 after a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak affected the industry in 2022. USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) researchers project overall food-at-home prices will decrease 0.4 percent in 2024, with a prediction interval of -4.5 to 4.0 percent. ERS tracks aggregate food category prices and publishes price forecasts in the monthly Food Price Outlook data product, updated January 25, 2024.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
In 2020 and 2021, the United States experienced 42 disaster events that each resulted in damages of at least $1 billion, including hurricanes, drought, and wildfires. The Emergency Relief Program (ERP) provides funds to assist commodity growers who suffered losses from natural disasters in 2020 and 2021. As of January 2023, cumulative payments made through the ERP totaled $7.3 billion. USDA disbursed a large portion of this total, $1.16 billion, to North Dakota producers of corn ($322 million), soybeans ($309 million), and wheat ($268 million) who experienced flooding in 2020 and drought in 2021. Texas producers also received a sizable portion of payments, with cotton farmers receiving $510 million of the $909 million disbursed in that State. Producers in North Dakota and Texas received most ERP payments for losses in revenue, quality, or production as a result of moisture and drought that occurred during the 2020 and 2021 crop years. The remaining top States receiving ERP payments were South Dakota ($567 million), Minnesota ($463 million), and Iowa ($408 million), which, together with North Dakota and Texas, represented approximately 48 percent of the total ERP payments disbursed as of January 2023. In early 2023, USDA launched a second phase of the ERP program, but disbursements from this phase are not included in these totals. This chart first appeared in the USDA, Economic Research Service report U.S. Agricultural Policy Review, 2022, published in November 2023.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Small family farms were more likely to have greater financial vulnerability than other farms, according to data from the 2022 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS). Researchers with USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) calculated the operating profit margin (OPM), one of many financial risk measures, by taking the ratio of profit to gross farm income to find that in 2022, between 52 and 79 percent of small family farms—depending on the farm type (retirement, off-farm occupation, low sales, moderate sales)—were at the high-risk level. If OPM is less than 10 percent, the operation is considered at high financial risk. When OPM is between 10 and 25 percent, the operation is considered at medium financial risk, and if OPM is above 25 percent, the operation is at low financial risk. A majority of small-scale family farms, which have a gross cash farm income (GCFI) of up to $350,000, earn most of their income from off-farm sources. For these farms, farm profitability is not necessarily essential to the survival of the household. Small family farms make up 88 percent of all farms but account for only 19 percent of the total value of production. Large family farms (GCFI of $1 million to $5 million) in 2022 were most likely to have low financial risk at 51 percent and least likely to be at high financial risk at 27 percent. Midsize farms (GCFI of $350,000 to $999,999) were also most likely to be in the low-risk zone at 39 percent and least likely to be in the medium-risk zone at 23 percent. This chart appears in the ERS report America’s Farms and Ranches at a Glance, published December 2023.
Monday, January 22, 2024
Following shifts in U.S. food spending during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, food-at-home (FAH) spending was only 2.7 percent higher in November 2023 compared with November 2019, while food-away-from-home (FAFH) spending remained elevated at 14.6 percent higher. After an initial jump in inflation-adjusted FAH spending in March through May 2020, FAH spending leveled off, averaging just 2.8 percent higher in December 2020 compared with 2019. Even as FAH prices increased throughout 2021 and 2022, inflation-adjusted FAH spending increased as well, with monthly FAH spending in these years averaging 7.2 percent higher than the corresponding months in 2019. FAH spending has trended back toward prepandemic levels since the peak difference of 9.5 percent in March 2022. By contrast, FAFH spending initially fell significantly during the pandemic but reversed quickly and outpaced 2019 spending starting in June 2021. From June 2021 through December 2022, monthly inflation-adjusted FAFH spending averaged 8.7 percent higher than the corresponding months in 2019. FAFH spending peaked at 14.8 percent higher in March 2023 compared with March 2019. This chart combines and updates two charts from USDA, Economic Research Service’s (ERS) Amber Waves article U.S. Consumers Spent More on Food in 2022 Than Ever Before, Even After Adjusting for Inflation using data from the ERS Food Expenditure Series data product, updated January 19, 2024.
Thursday, January 18, 2024
U.S. cotton mill use—the volume of raw cotton processed into textiles—is estimated at 1.9 million bales for the 2023/24 marketing year (August–July). If realized, cotton used by U.S. textile mills would fall to its lowest level in more than 100 years—since the 1884/85 marketing year, when approximately 1.7 million bales were used. U.S. cotton mill use has been mostly on a downward trend since the early 1940s when cotton use peaked during World War II. Soon after the end of the war, synthetic fibers were developed and began substituting for cotton. Use of synthetics in the production of textiles continued to expand and further reduced cotton mill use through the early 1980s when the downward trend was dramatically reversed. Promotion efforts and programs such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative and later the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fostered U.S. cotton yarn and fabric production. U.S. cotton mill use rose, peaking again in the mid-1990s, before the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Textiles and Clothing began phasing out quotas on developed countries’ textile and apparel product imports. By the early 2000s, cotton mill use in several countries—particularly China—expanded to take advantage of the phased-out quotas on cotton product exports to the United States. Although U.S. raw cotton exports benefited from increased foreign mill demand, U.S. cotton mill use weakened, and the downward trend led to the near historically low 2023/24 U.S. cotton mill use projection. This information is drawn from the USDA, Economic Research Service’s December 2023 Cotton and Wool Outlook.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Large-scale family farms accounted for a majority of the value of commodity production in 2022, including cash grains and soybeans (51 percent), hogs (56 percent), cotton (65 percent), specialty crops (65 percent), and dairy (76 percent). On the other hand, small family farms accounted for 3 percent of the value of production for dairy, 4 percent for cotton, 7 percent for specialty crops, and 26 percent for beef, but they produced the majority of hay (53 percent) and 45 percent of poultry and eggs. The value of production by nonfamily farms ranged from 5 percent for both hay production and poultry and eggs production to 19 percent for specialty crop production. This chart uses data appearing in America’s Farms and Ranches at a Glance, published December 2023.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Breastfeeding is considered the best source of nutrition for infants and is therefore promoted by USDA’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Initiation, one breastfeeding metric, refers to breastfeeding an infant shortly after birth, including at or before discharge from the hospital. From 2009 to 2017, rates of breastfeeding initiation increased among low-income women regardless of WIC participation status or race/ethnicity. Hispanic women had the highest rates of breastfeeding initiation throughout the study period. Non-Hispanic Black women had the lowest rates of breastfeeding initiation, but they experienced the largest gains (22.3 percent among WIC participants and 24.1 percent among WIC-eligible nonparticipants). Compared with WIC-eligible nonparticipants (80.1 percent), WIC participants (78.5 percent) continued to have lower rates of breastfeeding initiation overall, although the gap in initiation between WIC-eligible nonparticipants and WIC participants closed for some racial/ethnic groups. In 2009, Asian/Pacific Islander women had the largest gap in breastfeeding initiation by WIC status. By 2017, this gap had narrowed and reversed direction because of a greater increase in breastfeeding initiation among WIC participants (21.4 percent) compared with WIC-eligible nonparticipants (8.6 percent). This pattern also was observed for American Indian/Alaska Native women and for non-Hispanic White women. This chart appears in the USDA, Economic Research Service’s Amber Waves article Rates of Breastfeeding Initiation Increased Among Low-Income Women, 2009–17; Racial and Ethnic Disparities Persist, released October 2023.
Thursday, January 11, 2024
U.S. milk production, as measured in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars, grew $13.0 billion (or 28 percent) to $59.2 billion in 2022, the highest level since 2014, according to data from the USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS). ERS annually estimates farm sector cash receipts—the cash income received from agricultural commodity sales. This increase in receipts coincided with the U.S. all-milk price rising to $26.46 per hundredweight, a 28.6-percent gain from 2021. The all-milk price is a gross price dairy farmers receive per hundredweight of milk sold and does not include deductions for items like transportation charges, promotion costs, or co-op dues. In 2014, cash receipts for milk reached an all-time high of $62.4 billion once adjusted for inflation, about 5 percent more than the 2022 total. This chart was created using information found in the ERS Farm Income and Wealth Statistics data product updated in November 2023. Estimates of 2023 milk receipts will be released in August 2024.
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
U.S. wheat imports are forecast at their highest in 6 years for the 2023/24 marketing year (July–June). Consecutive years of drought in key U.S. growing regions of hard red winter wheat, an ingredient used for making bread, Asian noodles, and flour, have tapered U.S. output, elevating domestic prices. Millers have sought less expensive sources, including competitively priced wheat from the European Union (EU). U.S. imports of hard red winter wheat, mostly from the EU, for 2023/24 are at 25 million bushels, a record high, and up from 5 million bushels from 2022/23. This trade flow is atypical. U.S. wheat imports are normally driven by hard red spring and durum wheat from neighboring Canada. In 2017/18, imports from Canada of both classes of wheat were elevated because of drought-related supply issues in the United States. While U.S. imports of hard red winter wheat are elevated in 2023/24, imports of soft red winter and white wheat are relatively close to normal levels. Related to tight supplies of this hard red winter wheat in 2023/24, U.S. exports of this class of wheat are forecast at their lowest level on record. This chart is drawn from the November 2023 Wheat Outlook, published by USDA, Economic Research Service.
Tuesday, January 9, 2024
How do you like your apricots? Apricots, a stone fruit like peaches, plums, and nectarines, are typically either processed by canning, freezing, or drying, or sold as fresh, whole apricots. Regardless of how you like apricots, their production has been decreasing since the 1990s in response to falling U.S. consumption, especially for processed apricots. Commercial production is concentrated on the West Coast, with California representing 90 percent of apricot production in 2023. The U.S. apricot industry has experienced a long-term downward trend in bearing acreage, falling 62 percent over the past 20 years. Growing competition from imports of processed apricot products and a general increase in consumption for all fresh fruit have encouraged growers to divert more of their acreage to higher valued commodities, resulting in fewer bearing acres of apricots and shifts in use. The downward trend in production has coincided with a decrease in the share of apricots used in the processing market. During the first three seasons of this decade (2020–22), processed utilization has averaged 45 percent—down from 63 percent during the early 2010s and 89 percent in the early 1980s. This reflected both small gains in fresh market use and a marked downward trend in processing uses (particularly canned and frozen). Until the 2020s, the volume used as fresh apricots had been trending higher each decade—roughly pacing population growth. This chart first appeared in the September 2023 Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook, published by USDA, Economic Research Service.
Monday, January 8, 2024
Adults in U.S. households that are less food secure are significantly more likely to have one or more chronic diseases, and the likelihood increases as food insecurity worsens. Researchers at USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) recently updated estimates of the fraction of working-age adults with chronic disease in households with incomes at or below 200 percent of the Federal poverty level based on food security status using data from 2019–22. They looked at the rate of five chronic diseases across four levels of household food security, ranging from high food security (households with no problems or anxiety about consistently obtaining adequate food) to very low food security (eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake reduced). From 2019–22, predicted illness prevalences among the five chronic diseases examined were 3.6 to 9.5 percentage points higher for adults in very low food-secure households compared with those in high food-secure households. This shows that food security status and health are closely linked. This chart updates information in the Amber Waves article, Adults in Households With More Severe Food Insecurity Are More Likely To Have a Chronic Disease, published in October 2017, and in the ERS report Food Insecurity, Chronic Disease, and Health Among Working-Age Adults, published in July 2017.
Thursday, January 4, 2024
According to data from USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), recent returns from rice farming are positive, on average. From 2012 to 2022, U.S. rice farmers received a positive net return (equal to the value of production minus costs) in all years except 2016, when rice fell to its lowest price of that decade. The total gross value of producing one acre of rice increased 23 percent over that time, ranging from a low of $863.46 in 2016 to a high of $1,439.19. This was, in part, because of strengthening rice prices. Notably, rice prices surged in recent years before reaching an all-time high in 2022. Over the 2012 to 2022 period, the total cost of producing one acre of rice increased by 36 percent. Most of the increase in cost stemmed from an increase in operating costs of 62 percent, while allocated overhead costs increased 6 percent. Surging fertilizer costs, which increased by $150.75 per acre from 2020 to 2022, largely drove the increase. By contrast, allocated overhead costs—a category that includes labor costs and the opportunity cost of land—increased by $12.09 since 2020. This chart is based on data collected from the ERS Commodity Costs and Returns data product.
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
In fiscal year (FY) 2022, USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) served an average of 41.1 million people per month in the 50 States and Washington, DC. SNAP is the largest domestic nutrition assistance program, accounting for about two-thirds of USDA spending on food and nutrition assistance in recent years. The SNAP participation rate increased nationwide during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, to a high of 12.5 percent of the resident population of the 50 States and DC in FY 2021. The FY 2022 rate fell slightly to 12.3 percent. SNAP participation varies across States because of differences in program administration and economic conditions. In FY 2022, the share of residents receiving SNAP benefits in each State ranged from as high as 24.5 percent in New Mexico to as low as 4.6 percent in Utah. In 35 States, the share was somewhere between 8 and 16 percent. This map appears in USDA, Economic Research Service’s Charting the Essentials, last updated November 2023.
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Genetically engineered (GE) seeds were commercially introduced in the United States for major field crops in 1996, with adoption rates increasing rapidly in the years that followed. The two main GE trait types are herbicide-tolerant (HT) and insect-resistant (Bt). These traits can be added individually to seeds as well as combined into a single seed, called stacked seed traits. USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) reports information on GE crops in the data product Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the U.S. These data show that by 2008, more than 50 percent of corn, cotton, and soybean acres were planted with at least one GE seed trait. Today, more than 90 percent of corn, cotton, and soybean acres are planted using at least one GE trait. Traits other than HT and Bt have been developed, such as resistance to viruses, fungi, and drought or enhanced protein, oil, or vitamin content. However, HT and Bt traits are the most used in U.S. crop production. While HT seeds also are widely used in alfalfa, canola, and sugar beet production, most GE acres are occupied by three major field crops: corn, cotton, and soybeans. This chart appears in the ERS topic page Biotechnology, published in October 2023.
Thursday, December 14, 2023
More than 88 percent of Mexico’s horticultural exports are destined for the United States. The strength of Mexico’s access to the U.S. market is, in part, due to efforts by Mexico’s horticultural growers to adapt to new U.S. food safety standards. In 2011, the United States passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which covers the safety of the entire U.S. food supply chain regardless of whether a company operates on U.S. soil or in a foreign country. In response to FSMA’s new requirements for food safety, Mexico’s horticultural companies made changes to equipment, invested in new infrastructure, and implemented new techniques for food testing. U.S. horticultural imports from Mexico have doubled in volume since FSMA’s implementation in 2011. From 2000 to 2021, these imports grew at a compound annual rate of 8 percent. Adjusting for inflation, the value of imports increased from about $3.5 billion in 2000 to about $17.6 billion in 2021, as expressed in 2021 dollars. By 2021, Mexico supplied almost two-thirds of U.S. vegetable imports and about half of U.S. fruit and tree nut imports. Although mandatory compliance with FSMA’s horticultural growing standards began at the start of 2018, many companies had initiated food safety programs before the laws were enacted in 2011. This chart is drawn from the USDA, Economic Research Service report, How Mexico’s Horticultural Export Sector Responded to the Food Safety Modernization Act, published in August 2023.
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
The number of counties classified as persistently poor has fallen over the last 10 years. Persistent poverty counties are those in which poverty rates of 20 percent or higher have persisted for 30 years or more. The USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) has published poverty county classifications since the 1980s (using data from as early as the 1950s), which allow for the evaluation of changes in county poverty status over time. The most current persistent poverty classification covers the period from 1990 to 2021. ERS researchers examined changes between this classification and one from a decade earlier (data from 1980 to 2011). There were 318 persistent poverty counties in the 30-year period ending in 2021 compared with 353 for the period ending in 2011, a drop of 10 percent. Overall, 282 counties remained persistently poor from one period to the next, 36 counties entered persistent poverty status, and 70 left that category. The entrants are largely characterized by poverty among the resident Hispanic population, as well as re-entrants within historically poor areas such as central Appalachia. The counties that left persistent poverty status were predominantly in the Southern Coastal Plains, which includes much of the historically poor region known as the Black Belt. This chart uses data found in the ERS Poverty Area Measures data product, updated in December 2023.