USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) annually calculates "normalized prices," which smooth out the effects of short run seasonal or cyclical variation, for key agricultural inputs and outputs. These normalized prices are used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Tennessee Valley Authority, USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, and other Federal agencies to evaluate the benefits of resource-related projects affecting agriculture.
Since 1993, USDA, ERS has calculated normalized prices using a consistent methodology. National-level prices (in table 1) are based on 5-year lagged averages of actual market-year prices (e.g., an average of 2019–23 market prices is used to calculate normalized prices for 2024 for the 2025 ERS report year). National prices indices (in table 2) are as reported by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. State-level normalized prices for the report year 2025 (in table 3) are calculated by multiplying the national-level normalized prices by the average ratios of the State-level market prices to the national market prices for 2021–23.
See the Documentation for details on data sources and methods.