Newsroom

New from ERS

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  Webinar: America's Farms and Ranches at a Glance: 2025 Edition

  In this webinar, ERS Economist Katherine Lacy presents findings from America's Farms and Ranches at a Glance: 2025 Edition.

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  America's Farms and Ranches at a Glance: 2025 Edition

  America's Farms and Ranches at a Glance: 2025 Edition

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  Webinar: Farm Income and Financial Forecasts, February 2026 Update

  During this webinar, ERS Economist Carrie Litkowski will present the first farm sector income and wealth forecasts for calendar year 2026.

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  Precision Dairy Farming, Robotic Milking, and Profitability in the United States

  ERS research shows that U.S. adoption of precision dairy technologies related to milking, breeding, and data systems has increased steadily since 2000. These technologies include sensors, data analytics, and automation, among others, which help operators to manage at the cow rather than herd level. This report finds that robotic milking, or use of two or more precision technologies from the broader set of technologies studied, increases U.S. farmers’ dairy net returns by 13 percent on average.

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  Webinar: Rural America at a Glance: 2025 Edition

  In this webinar, ERS Geographer Tracey Farrigan shares highlights from the 2025 edition of the report, including indicators on population change and migration trends, employment, income, and poverty.

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  Rural America at a Glance: 2025 Edition

  Rural America at a Glance is an annual report that highlights recent social and economic conditions in nonmetropolitan areas of the United States.

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  Farm Labor Expenses: Evidence from the 1997–2022 Census of Agriculture Data

  This report explores U.S. farm labor expenses using Census of Agriculture data, which when adjusted for inflation, reveal that total farm labor expenses have increased in real terms from 1997 to 2022. Topics examined include changes in labor intensity, expense totals by State, contract labor’s share of total labor expenses, and the distribution of labor expenses by farm size.

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  U.S. Horticultural Imports From Mexico: 14 Years of Expansion From 2007–09 to 2021–23

  This economic brief explores changes in U.S. horticultural imports from Mexico between 2007–09 and 2021–23. These imports grew significantly during the period studied, boosting U.S. per capita availability of a wide range of fresh produce. In real terms (2023 dollars), U.S. horticultural imports from Mexico grew from an annual average of $7.3 billion during 2007–09 to $19.7 billion during 2021–23. Imports increased for all 20 of the leading horticultural imports from Mexico.

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  Documentation for the Agri-Food Economic Data System (Ag-FEDS): A More Complete Accounting of the U.S. Agri-Food Economy

  This report introduces the Agri-Food Economic Data System (Ag-FEDS), an integrated system of economic data that elaborates the linkages between all production and consumption activities throughout the economy, and shares details of the models and assumptions supporting the new tool.

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  Characterizing Foreign Investment in U.S. Agricultural Land, 2022

  This report provides a comparison of foreign-owned and foreign-leased U.S. agricultural land held in 2022 using data collected as part of the mandatory reporting requirements set forth in the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA). Foreign-held, long-term leases (i.e., 10-year-or-more) account for roughly one-third of the foreign-held U.S. agricultural land as of December 31, 2022, up from roughly 20 percent in 2017. This report also identifies important differences between foreign-owned and foreign-leased agricultural land in the United States, in terms of its use, location, size, and other characteristics. A much greater share (85 percent versus 2 percent) of foreign-leased agricultural land is associated with renewable energy development than foreign-owned land. A much smaller share of foreign leases (less than 10 percent) results in a change in the agricultural producer (operator) when compared with foreign purchases of agricultural land. The research in this report shows that foreign leases of agricultural land are more likely to result in the dual use (i.e., agriculture and renewable energy) of such lands that provide owner-operators with an additional stream of income without significantly impacting the existing agricultural situation.