Background
The food dollar series measures annual expenditures
by U.S. consumers on domestically produced food. This
data series is composed of three primary series—the
marketing bill series, the industry group
series, and the primary factor series—that
shed light on different aspects of the food supply chain.
This new and expanded food dollar series provides an improved
overview of the food system, with more accurate and informative
estimates of the farm share and the distribution of food-dollar
value-added shares over time.
Marketing bill statistics for food commodities have been
published annually since the 1940s by USDA's Economic
Research Service (ERS). The Agricultural Marketing Act
of 1946 mandated that USDA measure the costs of marketing
U.S. agricultural commodities. Due to measurement problems,
the discontinuation of several underlying data sources,
and increased interest in evolving supply-chain relationships,
ERS has replaced the marketing bill series with the new
food dollar series. The food dollar series uses input-output
analysis to calculate the food dollar and its components
for the years 1993 to 2010. The series will be updated
annually.
Input-output analysis generates food dollar estimates
(and food-and-beverage dollar estimates) for three expenditure
categories—total expenditures, at-home expenditures,
and away-from-home expenditures. For each expenditure
category, three primary dollar series are generated:
- The marketing bill series measures
the food dollar share accruing to farmers from the sale
of raw food inputs (the farm share), with the
remainder accruing to food supply chain industries involved
in all post-farm activities that culminate in final
market food dollar sales (the marketing bill).
- Because the market value of all food dollar expenditures
equals the value added by all food dollar supply chain
industries, the industry group value-added series
divides the food dollar into total value added for ten
industry groups: farm and agribusiness, food processing,
packaging, transportation services, energy, retail trade,
foodservices, finance and insurance, advertising, and
legal-accounting-bookkeeping services.
- The primary factor series divides
the food dollar into the value contributions of four
primary production factor groups—salary and benefits, property income, output taxes,
and imports. Then a cross-tabulation table
divides the food dollar into the primary factor returns
for each industry group. All estimates are reported
in both nominal (current price) and real (inflation
adjusted) dollars.
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