Food security—access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life—is one requirement for a healthy, well-nourished population. ERS plays a leading role in Federal research on food security in U.S.
Summary of USDA May 2018 forecasts for U.S. agricultural trade in FY 2018.
Research on farm structure examines the shift of agricultural production to larger firms, and the ownership and organization of farm businesses.
The ERS Food Expenditure Series is a comprehensive data set that measures the U.S. food system, quantifying the value of food acquired in the United States by type of product, outlet, and purchaser.
Interactive Visualization: Costs and Returns by Region and by Commodity
The data include historical U.S. and State-level farm income and wealth estimates as well as U.S.-level forecasts for the current calendar year.
Ninety-eight percent of U.S. farms are family farms, and they account for 87% of production.
An analysis of how--and why--food costs for school meals provided by Federal programs vary by region.
Among produce growers, larger growers (measured by annual produce sales) had adopted food safety practices at higher rates than smaller growers in advance of the Food Safety Modernization Act’s Produce Rule.
USDA’s Economic Research Service provides the following updates to the schedules of products that were affected by the lapse in federal funding.
Seasonal feature: Get background information and data on turkey – production, top producing States, consumption, exports, wholesale and retail prices.
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A recent ERS study estimated the economic impacts if 90 percent of infants participating in WIC in 2016 were breastfed for 12 months and received no infant formula. Under this scenario, mothers would stay in the program longer and annual WI...
Six large firms dominated the sale of seeds and agricultural chemicals in 2015 in the United States and around the world: BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The “Big Six” produced and sold crop-protection products su...
Between 1982 and 2012, larger crop farms were more productive than smaller crop farms in the Heartland region. This productivity gap has widened over time and may have driven the ongoing shift in production to larger farms. Aggregate produc...
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