United Economic Research Service - Böcker

Food security-consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life-is essential for health and good nutrition. The extent to which a nation's population achieves food security is an indication of its material and social well-being. Differe...

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Researchers use Nielsen Homescan data, which provide detailed food-purchase information from a panel of U.S. households, to address a variety of important research topics. However, some question the credibility of the data since the data are self-...

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The European Union's sugar policy, in place since 1968, underwent its first major reform in 2005 in response to mounting and unsustainable imbalances in supply and demand. The reform, however, targeted only a few policy instruments (intervention p...

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As more is learned about the impacts of foreign animal-disease outbreaks, questions arise regarding the efficacy of existing animal disease-impact models for capturing the array of effects across many economic sectors and time. Previous models lac...

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Results from reviewed studies indicate that for most participants in the Food Stamp Program-children, nonelderly men, and the elderly-use of food stamp benefits does not result in an increase in either Body Mass Index (BMI) or the likelihood of be...

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The objective of this research is to extend and generalize the equilibrium displacement methodology by combining it with mathematical programming methods and existing knowledge of farm sector relationships to develop sectoral adjustment models tha...

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Since 1998, Congress has provided funds to ERS to study and evaluate the Nation's domestic food and nutrition assistance programs. ERS has become the premier source of food and nutrition assistance research in the United States, sponsoring over 60...

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Hog production in 2004 was characterized by wide variation in the types, sizes, and economic performance of operations. Operations specializing in a single production phase generated more than three times the product value, on average, of those us...

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The Regional Environment and Agriculture Programming Model (REAP), facilitates scenario-or "what if"-analyses by showing how changes in technology, commodity supply or demand, or farm, resource, environmental, or trade policy could affec...

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As obesity has come to the forefront of public health concerns, there is growing interest in finding ways to guide consumers' food choices to be more beneficial for their long-term health. About one in five Americans participates in at least one n...

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The promotion of recreation and tourism has been both praised and criticized as a rural development strategy. This study uses regression analysis to assess the effect of recreation and tourism development on socioeconomic conditions in rural recre...

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The average cost of producing a hundred pounds (cwt) of rice was $6.00 for U.S. producers surveyed in 2000, ranging from about $2 per cwt to more than $10. Producers in the lowest quartile of production costs averaged $3.99 per cwt compared with $...

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Recent industry innovations improving the safety of the Nation's meat supply range from new pathogen tests, high-tech equipment, and supply chain management systems, to new surveillance networks. Despite these and other improvements, the market in...

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International trade in fruits and vegetables has expanded at a higher rate than trade in other agricultural commodities, particularly since the 1980s. Not only has world trade in fruits and vegetables gained prominence, but the variety of commodit...

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The North American greenhouse tomato industry has grown rapidly since the early 1990s and now plays a major role in the fresh tomato industry. However, relatively little is known about this new industry, in part because of the lack of reliable pro...

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This report examines the conceptual relationships between food safety and international trade and analyzes empirical examples from the meat and poultry, produce, food and animal feed crop, and seafood sectors.

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Poultry meat is the fastest growing component of global meat demand, and India, the world's second largest developing country, is experiencing rapid growth in its poultry sector. In India, poultry sector growth is being driven by rising incomes an...

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A rich data set of coffee prices and costs was used to determine to what extent changes in commodity costs affect manufacturer and retail prices. On average, a 10-cent increase in the cost of a pound of green coffee beans in a given quarter result...

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Retail consolidation, technological change in production and marketing, and growing consumer demand for produce have altered the traditional market relationships between producers, wholesalers, and retailers. Increasingly, produce suppliers are as...

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The distribution of commodity-related payments and Federal crop insurance indemnities to U.S. farmers has shifted to larger farms as more and more U.S. agricultural production is done on those farms. Since the operators of larger farms tend to hav...

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Because farm real estate represents much of the value of U.S. farm sector assets, large swings in farmland values can affect the financial well-being of agricultural producers. This report examines both macroeconomic (interest rates, prices of alt...

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The United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres. In 2007, the major land uses were forestland at 671 million acres (30 percent); grassland pasture and rangeland at 614 million (27 percent); cropland at 408 million (18 percent);...

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Over the past two decades, private label food products have grown steadily in sales and often directly compete for market share with national brands. This competition lowers prices and increases product choices for consumers. This report analyzes ...

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Nitrogen is an important agricultural input that is critical for crop production. However, the introduction of large amounts of nitrogen into the environment has a number of undesirable impacts on water, terrestrial, and atmospheric resources. Thi...

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This report characterizes Mexican feeder-calf and fed cattle production systems in the context of the imports of Mexican feeder cattle into the United States. The increase in cattle feeding in Mexico will increasingly affect U.S. feeder cattle imp...

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The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resulted from a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies, provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in resp...

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This report profiles and analyzes Brazil's ethanol industry, providing information on the policy environment that enabled the development of feedstock and processing sectors, and discusses the various opportunities and challenges to face the indus...

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