This data set contains:
- Monthly organic and conventional wholesale (first receiver) prices for poultry (broilers) and eggs;
- Monthly organic market (f.o.b. or spot) prices for grain and feedstuffs;
- Monthly organic and conventional wholesale prices for broccoli, carrots, and mesclun mix;
- A limited set of organic prices (and corresponding conventional prices) for other fruits and vegetables from the Boston and San Francisco wholesale markets;
- Monthly retail prices for organic and conventional milk, eggs, rice, carrots, salad mix, spinach, and strawberries; and
- Monthly organic and conventional farmgate prices for broccoli and carrots (data series ends in 2007).
Data Sources
Data on market prices for organic produce, poultry/eggs, and grain/feedstuffs are available from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), Market News. Produce reports are daily, while poultry/eggs and grain/feedstuffs are weekly. For comparison, conventional prices are available for produce items and poultry/eggs.
Market News reports wholesale prices for some organic produce items in its daily wholesale fruit and vegetable reports, which cover terminal markets in 15 U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, and Seattle. Organic produce prices first appeared in the Boston and Philadelphia Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Report in 1992. Since then, Market News has increasingly reported organic prices in a number of other wholesale markets, most consistently for Boston and San Francisco. Reported prices reflect transactions by wholesalers for sales of less than a carload or truckload and for products that are of good quality and condition, unless otherwise noted.
Conventional wholesale prices are for produce items in the Boston and San Francisco markets that correspond to the same commodity, variety, package, size, and grade as their organic counterparts.
Organic price data for poultry and eggs at the intermediary level became available from AMS Market News starting in January 2004. The reports track the prices paid to the poultry or egg companies by the first receiver (or that entity that purchases the product from the companies, such as a retailer, distributor, or manufacturer). Prices include all types of transactions, including contract and spot market.
Conventional price data for eggs and poultry are also obtained from AMS Market News. Like the organic price data, the conventional price data reported by AMS represent the price paid by the first receiver to the poultry or egg companies.
Organic price data for grain and feedstuffs became available from AMS Market News in February 2007 for the Upper Midwest and in April 2007 for the Corn Belt. Prices are free on board (f.o.b.) (price at place of origin, not including transportation charges) and negotiated spot market (price of a commodity available for immediate delivery).
Organic and conventional retail prices are for select organic packaged goods that carry a UPC code. The products selected are representative of the wide range of organic products available to U.S. consumers: milk, eggs, rice, carrots, salad mix, spinach, and strawberries.
The prices were calculated by ERS using the Nielsen Homescan data set, which contains records of food purchases made by approximately 41,000 U.S. households in 2004, 2005, and 2006. The Nielsen Homescan data set uses a consumer panel consisting of randomly selected households across the United States and includes purchase and demographic information for all households in the sample. The panel is geographically dispersed and is demographically balanced in terms of household income, family composition, education, and other characteristics. Each household is equipped with an electronic home-scanning unit, and household members record every UPC-coded food purchase by scanning in the product's UPC code or the relevant product look-up code for non-UPC coded food purchases. One of the unique features of the Homescan data is that panelists record food purchases across all retail outlets that sell food for home consumption, including grocery, drug, mass merchandiser, club, supercenter, and convenience stores.
The Nielsen data set includes, for each product, an identifier indicating whether the USDA organic logo or an organic claim was present on the package. ERS researchers used this identifier to differentiate organic and conventional items within each product category. They then calculated a per-unit price (fluid ounce for milk, for example) for the organic and conventional products for each household. The per-unit prices were averaged over all households in the data set for each month, and then scaled up to familiar units (half gallon for milk, dozens for eggs, etc.). Thus, the tables contain prices that were averaged across all purchases made by the households for each month of the years.
At the farmgate level, organic prices for fruits and vegetables for 1999-2007 were obtained from a proprietary data source, Organic Food Business News (OFBN), which gathered the data from a weekly nationwide survey of farmers, buyers, traders, and shippers. A major strength of the data was that they provided regular information on price levels for a variety of organic crops over a long period of time. However, the data are from a private source and are hard to evaluate for consistency and accuracy; further, the data are no longer collected. Conventional farmgate prices are U.S. monthly f.o.b. shipping-point prices from USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, as reported in ERS's Vegetables and Melons Yearbook.
Why This Information Is Important
Understanding trends in price premiums can provide some insight into relative changes in the demand and supply of organic products, and help indicate the maturity of markets and whether the dramatic growth in organic agriculture is likely to continue. Studies of organic price premiums, however, are limited by a lack of consistent and comparable price data.
External Contributors
For more information, contact...
- Terry
Long, Branch Chief, Fruit and Vegetable Market News, AMS, (202) 720-2175, for organic wholesale produce prices,
- Michael Sheats, Chief, Poultry Market News and
Analysis Branch, AMS, (202) 720-6911, for organic wholesale (first receiver) poultry and egg prices, and
- Jim Bernau, Livestock Reporting Supervisor, AMS, (515) 284-4460, for organic grain and feedstuff prices.
Prices can also be downloaded by individual
wholesale market and by day from AMS's Archived
Market News Reports. Users can also sign
up to receive AMS Market
News Reports via e-mail from USDA's Economics,
Statistics, and Market Information System.
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