ERS

The market for local food – food that is produced, processed, distributed and sold within a specific region, say a radius of several hundred miles – is growing. Large, small and midsized farms are all tapping into it. Even better, new data suggest that these producers are employing more workers than...

In business, location means everything. Not only do businesses need to understand where their customer base exists, but they also need to know where their competitors are. The same applies to farmers markets: they must understand their customers and competition to determine the potential for profit...

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. Nutrition advice is all around us—in grocery stores, magazines, public service announcements, and food labels. We’re...

This Saturday is National Nut Day, a perfect opportunity to honor nature’s nutritional dynamo– the nut. It seems that Americans are more than a little nutty about nuts, which are considered specialty crops. Nearly one out of every 10 of us eats nuts, or a nut product, at least once a day. Almonds...

How worried should Charlie Brown be? Is there any truth to what some are calling the Great Pumpkin Shortage? After Hurricane Irene pummeled and soaked the Northeast, the media began reporting that damage to the pumpkin crop portended a general shortage of pumpkins for the Halloween season and beyond...

Ever wonder exactly how many Americans struggle to put food on table? It’s a question pondered more and more during a tough economy. Today, the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) has shed some light on these conditions with their annual analysis of Americans’ success in feeding themselves and...

This year, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) celebrates its 50 th anniversary. ERS was established on April 3, 1961 during the Kennedy Administration, when USDA combined the Department’s economic research functions into one agency. The functions of our predecessor agency, the Bureau of...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: Ensuring that Americans eat well and lead healthy lives is among our greatest goals at USDA. First Lady Michelle Obama, of course, has taken an important role on this front – leading a national conversation and administration-wide effort. As part of the Lets...

Much of my work as a sociologist at the Economic Research Service (ERS) involves research on the food security of U.S. households – their ability to consistently obtain adequate food. My colleagues and I were naturally concerned about how the economic downturn that began in late 2007 would affect...

Today, the Economic Research Service (ERS) posted a new and innovative interactive mapping tool that makes it easy to visualize and compare rural economic and social conditions among counties, states, and regions. By creating county-level maps of the United States, users can see how socioeconomic...