Agricultural Baseline Database - Documentation

Note: The analysis of international baseline projections for global trade through 2035 was not conducted in 2026 and will not be published.

Description

USDA’s long-term agricultural baseline projections indicate the U.S. 10-year supply, demand, and trade for major agricultural commodities. The Agricultural Baseline Database web pages contain domestic projections.

U.S. commodity and global macroeconomic projections are first made available annually in November (often referred to as the early-release tables). The complete baseline projections, released in February each year, provide details supporting the USDA’s Agricultural Projections report. The full report contains additional projections for U.S. specialty crops, U.S. farm income, and U.S. agricultural trade.

The projections are based on specific assumptions about macroeconomic conditions, policy, weather, and international developments, with no future domestic or external shocks to global agricultural markets. Examination of the long-term agriculture projections, in addition to historic data, can better inform decisions related to agricultural policy and business. Projections of key market indicators can help decision makers evaluate the effect of various courses of action. USDA uses the data to develop long-term budget outlay projections for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Scope/Coverage of Data

The domestic baseline projections cover major U.S. field crop, fruit and nut, vegetable, and livestock commodities. The domestic visualization and custom query tools contain only U.S. centered data on field crop and livestock commodities.

Visualization: U.S. Agricultural Baseline Projections

Custom Queries: U.S. Agricultural Baseline Projections

U.S. commodity coverage:

Livestock products- beef and veal, pork, lamb and mutton, chicken, turkey, eggs, and milk
Grains- barley, corn, oats, rice, sorghum, and wheat
Other crops- sugar and upland cotton
Oilseeds- soybean, soybean meal, and soybean oil
Fruits and nuts- citrus, noncitrus, and tree nuts
Vegetables- fresh market, processing, potatoes, pulses, melons, and mushrooms

The U.S. Baseline includes supply, demand, price, trade, macroeconomic, and assumes policies in place at a fixed point in time. Below is a list of select key variables.

Select key variables:

Supply- area harvested, yield, production, beginning stocks, and ending stocks
Demand- total food demand, per capita food demand, total consumption, feed demand, and seed, industrial & waste
Macroeconomic- Gross Domestic Product (GDP), per capita GDP, GDP deflator, exchange rates, population, and consumer price indices
Trade- imports and exports
Prices (crops and animal products) and costs (crops only)- domestic prices, production costs

Methods

The USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), in collaboration with the Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee (IAPC), develops annual 10-year domestic baseline projections for the U.S. agricultural sector using a consensus-driven approach. These projections provide a plausible long-run scenario for U.S. supply, demand, prices, farm income, and related indicators across major commodities, such as field crops (corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, barley, oats, upland cotton, sugar) and livestock products (beef, pork, poultry, eggs, dairy). They are conditioned on explicit assumptions including those on U.S. macroeconomic trends (e.g., GDP growth, population, inflation, consumer income), unchanged U.S. agricultural policies under current law, normal weather patterns with no extreme events, continued productivity growth (e.g., crop yields and livestock efficiency), and no major domestic shocks. Historical supply and demand data, primarily from USDA sources such as the October World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, serve as the starting point for projections of variables including planted acres, yields, production, domestic use (e.g., food, feed, industrial), ending stocks, and market-clearing prices.

The methodology employs commodity-specific analytical tools and models, including econometric and process-based approaches, to generate initial projections for U.S. commodities. Specialists from ERS and other USDA agencies analyze economic behavioral relationships (e.g., supply responses to prices and costs, demand tied to income and preferences) and refine these through an iterative process to ensure internal consistency, such as aligning livestock feed demand with crop supplies.

*For more information on the methods used to develop livestock projections see Structure of the USDA Livestock and Poultry Baseline Model and Documentation for the USDA, Economic Research Service Annual U.S. Dairy Sector Econometrics Model.

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

The USDA’s long-term domestic agricultural projections are a single, unified departmental product developed though a censuses process involving an interagency committee. The projections are developed by a large team of subject matter experts representing the World Agricultural Outlook Board, Foreign Agricultural Service, Agricultural Marketing Service, Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, Office of the Chief Economist, the Economic Research Service, and other USDA agencies.

Limitations

The projections only include policies that are in place or are expected to be implemented as of October of the most recent year. Critical long-term assumptions are made for U.S. and international macroeconomic conditions, weather, U.S. and foreign agricultural and trade policies, and growth rates of agricultural productivity in the United States and abroad. The baseline process also assumes that no future major domestic or external shocks during the projection period. Changes in these assumptions can significantly affect the projections, and actual conditions will alter the outcomes. Thus, the projections represent anticipated outcomes based on underlying trends, rather than acting as a forecast based on likely, but uncertain, business cycles, weather developments, and policy changes, among other factors.

Resources:

ERS:

Other:

World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report

Recommended Citation:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Agricultural Baseline Database.