Quick Facts

The food dollar series provides an overview of the food system, with estimates of the farm share and of the distribution of food-dollar value-added shares over time:

• For every dollar spent in 2017 in the U.S. on domestically produced food (food dollar), U.S. farmers sold 14.6 cents of farm products to non-farm establishments (farm share), down from 14.8 cents in 2016. The farm share is at its lowest level since being recorded by the current series which started with 1993 statistics.
• Since the previous year, farm production costs per food dollar remained constant at 7.8 cents in 2017 and are still at their lowest level since 2002.
• Foodservice costs per food dollar rose in 2017 to 36.7 cents, increasing for 8 of the past 9 years since 2008; foodservice costs were 29.0 cents in 2008.
• Food packaging costs are 2.3 cents, an all-time low since the beginning of this series in 1993; packaging costs were recorded at their highest level of 4.2 cents most recently in 2002.