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Possible Implications for U.S. Agriculture From Adoption of
Select Dietary Guidelines
Jean C. Buzby, Hodan Farah Wells, and Gary Vocke
Economic Research Report No. (ERR-31), November 2006
The latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans was released in
January 2005. In April 2005, the Guidelines’ companion
MyPyramid Food Guidance System was released and replaced the
1992 Food Guide Pyramid. A major focus of the new Guidelines
is to encourage Americans to consume fruit, vegetables, dairy
products (particularly fat-free or low-fat milk products), and
whole-grain products, while staying within caloric recommendations.
What Is the Issue?
Currently, the average American diet falls short of the daily
recommendations for fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and milk
and milk products in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans
and in the supporting MyPyramid Food Guidance System. If Americans
were to bring their diets fully in line with these recommendations,
changes in the mix and quantity of foods produced in the United
States would undergo some major shifts.
What Did the Study Find?
If Americans were to fully meet the Guidelines’ recommendations
for fruits, vegetables, total grains, and whole grains, U.S.
agriculture would need to harvest 7.4 million additional acres
of cropland per year, an increase of 1.7 percent of total U.S.
cropland in 2002. Additionally, U.S. dairy farmers would need
to raise annual production of milk and milk products by an estimated
108 million pounds (about a 65-percent increase) for Americans
to meet recommendations for dairy consumption. Such an increase
in dairy demand would likely require an increase in the number
of dairy cows, an increase in the volume of feed grains needed,
and, possibly, an increase in the acreage devoted to dairy production.
Fruit. Americans would need to increase daily
fruit consumption by 132 percent to meet the new dietary recommendations.
The additional demand could require U.S. producers to more than
double harvested fruit acreage to 7.6 million acres (from 3.5
million). U.S. fruit production is constrained by land, labor,
and climate, making it likely that imports would continue to
increase as a share of the total U.S. fruit supply.
Vegetables. To meet the new recommendations
for vegetables, Americans’ daily vegetable consumption
would need to rise by about 31 percent and the mix of vegetables
consumed would need to change. For example, consumption of legumes
would have to increase by 431 percent, and consumption of starchy
vegetables would have to decline by 35 percent. To meet this
increased demand, the area harvested for vegetables in the United
States would need to increase by about 137 percent from 6.5
million acres to 15.3 million acres.
Milk and milk products. Americans would need
to increase their consumption of dairy products, including fat-free
or low-fat milks and equivalent milk products(e.g., nonfat yogurt),
by 66 percent (requiring an additional 111 billion pounds of
milk per year) to meet the new dietary recommendations. Domestic
production could account for 108 billion pounds of that increase,
most likely by expanding dairy cow inventories, an action counter
to long-term industry trends.
Whole grains. To meet the dietary recommendations,
Americans would need to increase their daily consumption of
whole grains by an estimated 248 percent and reduce their consumption
of total grains by about 27 percent. Because it takes less raw
wheat to produce a whole-grain product than a similar refined-grain
product and because of the decline in total-grain intake, the
overall drop in demand could translate to producers’ harvesting
about 5.6 million fewer acres of wheat each year.
How Was the Study Conducted?
The authors used both the ERS Food Availability data and the
ERS Food Guide Pyramid Servings data, which are the ERS Food
Availability data adjusted for plate waste and other food losses
and converted to daily per capita servings. These data series
are proxies for actual food consumption. The authors assumed
a consumption level of 2,000 calories per day for the average
American, which corresponds with the level used throughout the
examples in the Dietary Guidelines and which is consistent with
the level on the Nutrition Facts labels that the Food and Drug
Administration requires on most packaged foods.
The analysis is a straightforward extrapolation from the data,
not an equilibrium model. For each food group covered here,
the authors calculated the percent change in per capita daily
consumption needed to meet the dietary recommendation and then
multiplied this percent change in consumption by the total availability
of that food group in the United States to estimate the new
level of food needed. Within each food group, the authors then
calculated the change in U.S. production needed to meet the
new recommendations using the consumption change estimates and
calculated the domestic acreage needed to meet the new production
levels. For these calculations, the authors (1) fixed the consumption
mix of individual foods at 2003 levels (i.e., no substitution),
(2) held exports constant at the average of 1999-2003 levels,
and (3) fixed relative shares of production and imports at the
average of 1999-2003 levels.
The analysis did not analyze the decreases in meat, added fats
and oils, and caloric sweetener consumption needed for Americans
to meet the Guidelines’ recommendations. Had these food
groups been incorporated in this analysis, their impacts may
have offset the increases in consumption and production noted
here, but, without explicit analysis, the net effect is uncertain.
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