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Feature
The California Leafy Greens Products Handler Marketing Agreement (LGMA) was established in 2007 to provide a minimum food safety standard for that industry. A recent ERS case study examined the 2012 food safety practices and costs of seven large LGMA participants.
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Feature
The U.S. food system accounted for 12.5 percent of the Nation's energy use in 2012. ERS research shows that the food system's use of energy is highly responsive to energy prices and can drive national energy use.
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Feature
Farmers can improve their drought resilience by making different crop choices, enrolling in crop insurance and other farm risk management programs, and investing in soil health. USDA conservation programs—intended primarily to improve on-site and off-site environmental quality—may also help producers adapt to drought risk.
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Finding
Dietary advice to limit intake of trans fats and mandatory trans-fat labeling of foods have been followed by a 53-percent reduction, on average, in trans-fat levels in the blood plasma of American adults.
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Finding
Improving economic conditions and declining births have contributed to the 16-percent drop in the number of people participating in USDA’s WIC assistance program since 2010.
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Finding
India is the world’s largest producer and consumer of milk. Growth in milk supply and demand has been robust, but projections indicate that production targets will be difficult to reach without stronger gains in productivity.
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Finding
A recent ERS study modeled the employment effects of a hypothetical 10-percent increase in foreign demand for U.S. agricultural exports.
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Statistic
The irrigation of agricultural crops accounts for most of the Nation’s water consumption. To better understand irrigation characteristics, such as acreage and water use, USDA conducts the Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey (FRIS) every 5 years. Most irrigated farms are low-sales operations, but large farms use most of the water.
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Feature
Public disclosure of information on food safety performance enables buyers to make more informed purchasing decisions regarding food safety, thereby signaling their demand for a higher level of food safety.
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Finding
A recent ERS study looked at the associations between store format choices and food purchasing decisions and found that households purchase the largest shares of healthful foods at supermarkets, supercenters, and warehouse club stores.
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Finding
About 19 percent of U.S. school districts reported serving at least one local food item daily in the 2011-12 school year. School districts in the Northeast, in cities, and with enrollments of 5,000 students or more were more likely to serve local foods every day.
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Finding
In 2013, approximately 18 million acres of alfalfa—with a production value of $10.7 billion—were harvested in the United States. Weed infestations can reduce alfalfa yields, lower forage quality, and increase the severity of insect infestations. Planting genetically modified, herbicide tolerant alfalfa allows for more effective and flexible weed control without damaging crops.
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Statistic
Trade is an important component of the U.S. agricultural sector. ERS tracks U.S. agricultural trade through the Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States (FATUS) data set and through commodity-specific data like the Livestock and Meat International Trade data set.
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Feature
National productivity growth in Russian agriculture is largely an outcome of activities in the South, which is exploiting relative geographic, infrastructural, and institutional advantages to spearhead the country’s agricultural improvements.
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Feature
Under recent merger proposals, the six global firms that dominate private agricultural chemical and seed research and production would be reduced to four. The mergers are subject to antitrust reviews in both the U.S. and the EU. The reviews will evaluate the likely effects of the mergers on specific seed and agricultural chemical markets, prices, and innovation.
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Finding
Researchers found that after the 2009 revisions to WIC food packages to include more whole grain foods, households participating in WIC increased their purchases of whole grains and decreased purchases of refined grains.
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Finding
The number of urban low-income and low-supermarket access census tracts grew by 5 percent from 2010 to 2015. Much of this increase was due to a rise in the number of low-income tracts, rather than declining access.
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Finding
Crops dedicated for use in energy production, such as switchgrass, are potential renewable sources for liquid fuels or bioelectricity. However, demand for switchgrass is low at the current cost of growing and converting it into useful energy, so markets do not presently exist for large-scale use of this resource.
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Statistic
Over 1994-2008, Americans obtained less than 20 percent of total fruit, dairy, and nuts from restaurants, fast food places, and other away-from-home eating places, whereas 39 percent of meat and fish and 40 percent of fats and oils were obtained away from home.
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Finding
In 2016, grocery store (food-at-home) prices decreased by 1.3 percent, the first time in nearly 50 years that at-home food prices were lower than those in the year before.
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Finding
After 16 years of imposing anti-dumping duties on U.S. poultry, South Africa allows a quota of 65,000 tons of U.S. poultry. ERS research suggests this will not seriously impact South Africa's poultry industry.
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Finding
In 2013-15, 89 percent of USDA/FSA Microloans went to recipients from targeted groups (beginning farmers and ranchers, women, minorities, and veterans). Also, in 2013-15, new FSA direct loan borrowers received a majority of Microloans.
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Statistic
Large-scale family farms—those with at least $1 million in annual sales—made up only 2.9 percent of all U.S. farms in 2015 but contributed 42 percent of total production.
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Feature
For many farm households, income varies considerably from year to year and may even be negative; farm household income volatility is driven mostly by farm income, which is more volatile than off-farm income. Total household income is more volatile on larger farms than on smaller farms, and crop farms have more volatile household income than livestock farms.
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Feature
In 2015, the Organic Trade Association estimated U.S. organic retail sales at $43.3 billion, showing double-digit growth during most years since 2000, when USDA set national organic standards. Since setting national organic standards, USDA has streamlined trade arrangements with multiple foreign governments to expand international markets for U.S. organic producers.
