Ag and Food Statistics: Charting the Essentials

USDA conservation efforts rely mainly on voluntary incentive programs to address natural resource issues. The Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to remove environmentally sensitive land from production and encourages partial field practices including grass waterways and riparian buffers. Working-land programs provide technical and financial assistance to farmers who install or maintain conservation practices on land in production (e.g., nutrient management, conservation tillage, and field-edge filter strips). Agricultural easements provide long-term protection for agricultural land and wetlands. The Regional Conservation Partners Program coordinates conservation program assistance with partners to solve problems on a regional or watershed scale.

Gross farm income reflects the total value of agricultural output plus Government farm program payments. Net farm income reflects income after expenses from production in the current year and is calculated by subtracting farm expenses from gross farm income. Net farm income considers both cash and noncash income and expenses. Inflation-adjusted net farm income is forecast to decrease 9.7 percent in 2021, to $111.4 billion. Inflation-adjusted farm production expenses are projected to increase 0.6 percent in 2021.

Between July 2018 and July 2019, rural (nonmetro) counties as a whole continued a very small increase in population that began a year earlier, following seven years of population decline. The gains in population have been quite small, a 0.02-percent increase in 2018-19 following a 0.04-percent gain in 2017-18. This contrasts with first-ever declines in nonmetro population that occurred from 2010-17, when annual population losses averaged -0.08 percent per year. (These most recent county population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau (as of March 26, 2020) reflect revisions to previous data.) Population growth rates for rural areas have been significantly lower than in urban (metro) areas since the mid-1990s, and the gap widened considerably after the housing-market crisis in 2007 and the Great Recession that followed. The gap between rural and urban growth rates has narrowed slightly in recent years but remains significant. The post-recession recovery in population growth for rural America during this decade has been much more gradual compared with previous post-recession periods.

The United States produces and sells a wide variety of agricultural products across the Nation. In terms of sales value, California leads the country as the largest producer of agricultural products (crops and livestock), accounting for almost 11 percent of the national total, based on the 2012 Census of Agriculture. Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, and Minnesota round out the top five agricultural-producing States, with those five representing more than a third of U.S. agricultural-output value.

U.S. agricultural exports were valued at $140 billion in 2018, a 1-percent increase relative to 2017. Export growth was hampered by reduced exports to Asia, particularly for soybean exports. Imports grew by 6 percent in 2018 to $129 billion. Imports have grown at a faster rate than exports since 2016, driven in part by strong domestic economic growth. These shifts in U.S. agricultural trade produced a trade surplus in 2018 of $10.9 billion, the smallest surplus since 2006.

While Americans are consuming more vegetables and fruit than in 1970, the average U.S. diet still falls short of the recommendations in the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans for these major food groups. Americans, on average, consumed more than the recommended amounts from the meat, eggs, and nuts group and the grains group in 2017.

Average annual food-at-home prices were 3.5 percent higher in 2020 than in 2019. For context, the 20-year historical level of retail food price inflation is 2.0 percent per year—meaning the 2020 increase was 75 percent above average. Food price increases in 2020 were primarily a result of shifts in consumption patterns and supply chain disruptions related to the coronavirus pandemic. Meat prices rose most sharply: beef and veal prices increased 9.6 percent, pork prices increased 6.3 percent, and poultry prices increased 5.6 percent in 2020. Only fresh fruits decreased in price, by 0.8 percent, in 2020.

In 2019, 89.5 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the year. The remaining 10.5 percent of households were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 4.1 percent (5.3 million households) that had very low food security. Food insecurity was lower in 2019 than 2018 (11.1 percent). Food insecurity increased from 10.5 percent in 2000 to nearly 12 percent in 2004, declined to 11 percent in 2005-07, then increased to 14.6 in 2008. Food insecurity peaked at 14.9 percent in 2011 and has declined since.