Documentation
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.
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.