economic research service

Since the 1980s, the number of very large crop farms with at least 2,000 acres of cropland has nearly doubled while midsize farms (100 to 999 acres of cropland) fell by nearly half as U.S. cropland has consolidated on fewer, larger farms.

The mission of USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) is to anticipate trends and emerging issues in agriculture, food and rural America and produces objective economic research to inform and enhance public and private decision making. Among its research activities, ERS is conducting research on the impacts of and returns to infrastructure in rural areas, and is cosponsoring a workshop with the Farm Foundation on these issues.

Households can have similar food needs, but often have different budgets with which to meet them. These budget differences may help explain observed differences in food spending and diet quality. A new report from USDA’s Economic Research Service digs into this issue using household level data from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to estimate the number of calories acquired and the amount of money spent to get them.

Since its inception nearly 100 years ago, USDA’s Agricultural Outlook Forum has provided analysis of the farm economy, including the short- and long-term outlook for agricultural commodity markets. Producing credible and reliable information about supply and demand conditions for all the major crop and livestock markets, along with the implications for prices, production and trade, is a year-round process that relies on expertise from dozens of highly-trained analysts spread across several USDA agencies, including USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS).

Who participates in federal food assistance programs, and how does participation affect their lives? Who doesn’t participate, and why not? Policymakers need high-quality data on such questions to make informed decisions about these programs, which affect millions of lives each year. That is why two USDA agencies are collaborating with the U.S. Census Bureau to produce research that sheds new light on the programs.

For more than a century, American families have used government-regulated food labels, such as “USDA prime beef,” to help them decide what food products to buy. Today, consumers also look to food labels for information about how their food was grown and how healthy it is. 

“Trick-or-treating” or more recently “Trunk-or-Treating” is a Halloween custom for many American families. According to the US Census Bureau 2015 Population Estimates, there are an estimated 41.1 million potential trick-or-treaters – children ages 5 to 14 – across the United States. Of course, children younger than 5 years old and older than 14 (adults included) enjoy celebrating Halloween.

Compared to urban areas, in 2015, manufacturing represented a greater share of both private nonfarm rural jobs (14 percent vs. 7 percent) and rural earnings (21 percent vs. 11 percent). A new report from USDA’s Economic Research Service, Rural Manufacturing at a Glance, examines the manufacturing sector in rural America.

Family farms remain an essential feature of agriculture in the United States. Family farms make up 99 percent of America’s 2.1 million farms and 89 percent of agricultural production. Most farms in the United States are small: 90 percent are small family farms that operate nearly half of America’s farmland.

Today is National Ag Day, a day to recognize the role of American agriculture in our daily lives and the efforts of those who shape the American food system. The average American farmer feeds approximately 144 people worldwide, and with agriculture being our number one export, agriculture is critically important to sustaining the U.S. economy.