Mexico has historically been a top export market for U.S. beef, but in 2003, it emerged as an important source of beef imports for the United States. U.S. beef imports from Mexico at least doubled in 2010 and 2011.

Over the last 25 years, Brazil emerged as a major agricultural producer and exporter, with agricultural production rising 77 percent between 1985 and 2006. Domestic reforms helped the country achieve economic and financial stability. That stability, as well as government investments in infrastructure and agricultural research, led to increases in agricultural productivity and expansion of cultivated area.

Although wheat yields over the last 20 years reached record highs under favorable weather conditions, wheat production in Afghanistan is extremely sensitive to variations in precipitation. During the main growing months, rainfall is scarce and farmers depend on irrigation. And decades of war and conflict have left much of the country’s irrigation system in a state of disrepair. These conditions limit growth in wheat area, which, in turn, limits growth in output.

ERS derived the farm value of whole milk and Cheddar cheese and then estimated models to measure the response of retail prices to changes in these farm values. Model results revealed that farm milk price shocks are not transmitted instantaneously to retail for either dairy product. The nature of price transmission is also very different for whole milk and Cheddar cheese.

While it is relatively easy to track the amount of meat imported by the U.S. and the number of livestock that enter the U.S., it is more difficult to estimate the amount of meat produced in the United States from animals that originated abroad. ERS estimates show the share of domestic production attributed to foreign-born animals is significant and trending upward.

The Federal Government has taken two policy approaches to help Americans reduce trans fats in their diets: publicizing the health risks and requiring food manufacturers to label the trans fat content of foods. ERS found that food manufacturers responded to the labeling requirements, nutritional advice from health officials, and national media coverage by reducing the trans fats in their products.

In 2010, about 35 cents from each dollar that U.S. consumers spent on food at grocery and other retail foodstores went to food processing establishments like flour mills, meatpacking plants, and dairy processors. This equates to an increase of around 14 percent since 2007, when the share was about 31 cents per dollar spent.

Healthy foods are perceived to be more expensive than less healthy foods, a belief perhaps fueled by studies showing that healthy foods are more expensive per calorie. This is not surprising, as less healthy foods tend to be higher in calories than healthy foods, and the price-per-calorie metric does not account for total calories consumed. ERS measured the prices of over 4,000 foods using three price metrics and found that prices for each food category varied depending on the metric used.

According to ERS’s food availability data, Americans consumed 58 pounds of chicken per person on a boneless, edible basis in 2010, and for the first time, chicken surpassed beef as the most consumed meat in the U.S. Chicken consumption began its upward climb in the 1940s and has doubled. since 1970.

In 2007, irrigated agriculture accounted for 55 percent of the total value of U.S. crop sales (including fruit and vegetable production) while also supporting the livestock and poultry sectors. The economic health and sustainability of irrigated agriculture will depend on the ability of producers to adapt to growing constraints on water, particularly through improved water-use efficiency.

Recently, markets have been developed that could allow farmers to generate and sell environmental credits when they adopt farming practices that improve the environment. Environmental markets use baselines to determine whether proposed improvements qualify for marketable credits, and setting baseline emissions levels is often a contentious element of market design.

The extent to which direct payments encourage agricultural production has been a point of dispute in WTO negotiations and legal cases. Recent ERS analysis, however, finds that direct payments have little effect on production decisions. A more rigorous ERS analysis accounting for farm and regional characteristics also found no evidence of direct payments having economically significant effects on production.

ERS research findings suggest that farm households purchasing individual health insurance directly from private vendors are likely to spend more on health care than those with other sources of health insurance. Other things being equal, among all farm households, those without any insurance coverage had the lowest health care expenditures.

ERS examined trade in seven developing countries to determine what would have been the frequency and intensity for price- and quantity-based special safeguard mechanisms (SSM) for cereal grains between 1995 and 2009. Findings suggest that if approved for use, both the quantity- and price-based SSM have the potential to be triggered in major grain markets in developing countries, thereby affecting agricultural trade with these countries.

The growing role of the ethanol industry as a supplier to the U.S. motor fuels market has reshaped the relationship between agriculture and energy markets. A recent ERS study found that price relationships between the U.S. corn and gasoline markets strengthened significantly after March 2008 and continue to be highly correlated.

Price increases for some high-calorie foods and beverages were found to have small but statistically significant effects on children's BMI, and in the direction expected. While the effects of the price increases are small, comparing them with the expected average growth in children's BMI over a year reveals a possibly large effect over time

ERS researchers used data from the Eating & Health Module of the American Time Use Survey to analyze associations between time spent on various activities and BMI. Data on time spent by Americans age 20 and older on 24 major activity categories reveal that the biggest differences between normal-weight people and obese people were in time spent watching television, participating in sports and exercise, and engaging in paid work.

In 2010, food insecurity rates were higher for U.S. households with members in nonstandard work arrangements than for those with members in full-time jobs. Findings suggest that employment relates to food insecurity in ways beyond the effects of earned income, such as through instability in income and work schedules that cut down on time available for preparing meals.

ERS researchers explored whether U.S. consumers adjusted their purchases of shrimp in response to the 2005 country-of origin labeling requirements for seafood. Findings show that consumers were not responsive to the new country-of-origin labels.

Recent ERS research examined geographic variation in retail prices for two foods that differ in their retail handling requirements and perishability, as well as in their nutritional profiles--fresh vegetables and salty snacks. Findings show that households are likely to face higher prices for each of these foods when certain economic and demographic conditions exist in their community.

Federal farm program payments help encourage good stewardship of natural resources through environmental compliance requirements. But the future effectiveness of environmental compliance requirements may be affected by the evolution of farm programs in the next farm bill.

R&D expenditures by the global food manufacturing industry reached $11.5 billion in 2007, with the U.S. accounting for $3.1 billion of the total. However, research intensity (research spending relative to the value of production) in U.S. food manufacturing is relatively low, at about 1.5 percent, compared with 10 percent for total U.S. manufacturing.

An important and unchanging feature of Clean Water Act is that livestock operations confining more than a specific number of livestock face more stringent rules. However, findings show that some farmers are avoiding the regulations by adjusting the size of their operations to just below the cutoff point.

In the coming years, anticipated deficit reduction legislation could affect rural America. It is too early to know with any certainty which Federal programs will be affected, or by how much, but the current composition of rural Federal funding receipts can reveal insights about rural America's potential vulnerability to budget cuts.

The base 10 provision of the 2008 Farm Act prohibits farms with 10 or fewer base acres from receiving direct and countercyclical payments (DCP) or Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program payments. In 2009, payments prohibited under the provision totaled $29.1 million, compared with over $5 billion total DCP and ACRE payments.

High pork prices in the Chinese market have created opportunities for the U.S. pork industy. However, U.S. pork sales to China have not risen at a steady rate.They tend to rise and fall in rhythm with cyclical changes in China's hog sector.

USDA has a long history of subsidizing school meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program. Increasingly, USDA is also involved in feeding children after school, especially low-income children.

Research has suggested that Americans view their diets too optimistically, underestimating the amount of calories in their diets, for example, or overestimating the nutritional value. Recent work by ERS suggests that, in recent years, such optimistic bias may be on the wane.

Increased energy and food commodity costs led to rising prices at the grocery store from mid-2007 through March 2009. Concurrently, the United States fell into a recession in December 2007 that lasted until June 2009.

A single program that provides income support to U.S. farmers and leverages improved environmental performance on their farms has intuitive appeal. However, existing conservation and commodity programs have very little in common, and attempting to meld them into a single program raises questions about to whom and under what conditions payments would be extended.

Over time, the Conservation Reserve Program's (CRP) size and goals have changed from its early emphasis on limiting soil erosion to include wildlife, water and air quality, and other conservation goals.

The main driver of agricultural productivity growth over the last 50 years has been the application of new technologies to farming. Robust productivity growth has allowed U.S. agriculture to hold down the cost and environmental consequences of growing more food and fiber.

ERS researchers used farm-level data from the 2002 and 2007 Censuses of Agriculture to examine the effect of increasing use of hog production contracts on spot market prices.

After 2 straight years of rapid growth, U.S. net farm income is forecast to decline by 6.5 percent in 2012 to $91.7 billion.

A recent ERS study found that increasing ethanol in the U.S. gasoline supply would lead to lower crude oil prices than would otherwise have been the case. A one-time 5-percent increase in U.S. ethanol use will lower the crude oil price by an estimated 8 cents per barrel over 12 months.

U.S. production of distillers’ grains (DGs), which include a range of animal feed co-products derived from corn-based dry-mill ethanol production, has quadrupled since 2004/05, paralleling the rapid growth of U.S. ethanol production.

The most recent USDA global food-security assessment (based on estimates of national food availability) indicates that India accounted for the single largest share of the world's food-insecure population in 2010-about 28 percent.

Animal disease outbreaks can have major trade impacts. ERS analysis of the effects of the 2004 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1-virus in Japan showed evidence of a willingness of Japanese consumers to substitute-for food safety reasons- processed dried egg products for fresh shell eggs. These changes in preference affect U.S. exports of shell eggs and egg products.

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends increased vegetable and fruit intake and a variety of vegetables, especially dark-green vegetables, red and orange vegetables, and beans and peas

Precision agriculture comprises a range of information technologies—such as yield monitors, global positioning systems (GPS), variable rate technology, and guidance systems—that farmers can use to better manage their agricultural production practices.

U.S. hog producers altered their manure management decisions between 1998 and 2009, suggesting an increased focus on applying nutrients at agronomic rates-that is, at levels that do not exceed what can be absorbed by crops.

During a decade of diminished population growth across rural and small-town America, Hispanic population growth and geographic dispersion during 2000-2010 was a strong driver of demographic change, as it has been for at least two decades.

After declining for much of the previous decade, the employment of hired farm laborers, supervisors, and managers stabilized in 2008 and rose somewhat in 2009 and 2010, according to data from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Farm Labor Survey.

As they react to income and price changes, consumers in low-income countries respond with larger adjustments to their food consumption patterns. These adjustments are not uniform across food categories—consumption of higher value food items, such as meats and dairy products, changes more than staple foods, which includes wheat and rice.

Byproducts -- edible offal, inedible offal, blood, hides, and rendered products -- include virtually all parts of the live animal that are not part of the dressed carcasses. Byproducts account for more than 10 percent of the value of cattle and more than 6 percent of the value of hogs.

ERS researchers have found that convenience is one food characteristic for which recession-constrained consumers will reduce expenditures. Specifically, sales of bagged leafy greens decrease relative to sales of unpackaged leafy greens when income levels fall.

ERS contracted with an independent, nonprofit research organization to develop new consumer-level loss estimates to update those ERS has used since the mid-1990s. If the new food loss estimates are adopted, changes to ERS’s current Loss-Adjusted Food Availability data would vary for individual foods.

Findings from a 2011 ERS study show that due to geographical food-price variation, the new fruit and vegetable voucher for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) buys substantially smaller amounts in some U.S. areas than in others.

The period of transitioning off SNAP can be a financially challenging time for some households despite their improved economic circumstances. Very low food security—characterized by disrupted eating patterns and reduced intake—is more prevalent among households that recently left SNAP than among households still receiving assistance.

In 2007, USDA conducted the first comprehensive survey of the production and marketing practices used by organic and conventional apple growers. The survey results indicate that organic and conventional apple growers make many similar production and marketing decisions.

ERS researchers found that farmland exchanges represent a relatively small share of all tax-deferred exchanges—about 2 percent between 1999 and 2003. Exchanges involving farmland accounted for roughly 6 percent of all farmland dispositions reported to the IRS in 1999-2003.

Very large commercial farms (with $1 million or more of agricultural sales per year) accounted for about 8 percent of all U.S. specialized vegetable and melon farms during 2005-07.

Beef cow-calf production, the first stage of the beef production process, occurs in every State and is economically important in most of the United States.

Photo: Collage of wheat stalks and loaves of bread on store shelves Prices for wheat, corn, and other major field crops and for agricultural products like cattle and fluid milk have spiked several times during the past decade.

Across America, over 42 million meals—31 million lunches and 11 million breakfasts—are served on a typical schoolday through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.

Biofuels have been promoted as a low-carbon alternative to petroleum with a range of other possible benefits, including the potential to support the farm sector and revitalize rural communities.

Economic recessions invariably reduce incomes as employment levels fall, but there is strong and consistent evidence that the weight of recession falls most heavily on those at the bottom of the income distribution—the deep poor— who find it hardest to afford basic necessities and ensure their well-being.

China is by far the world’s largest supplier of apple juice concentrate, a key ingredient in consumer juice products and other beverages in the United States and other countries.

Japan was once the largest export market for U.S. beef, importing as much as $1.6 billion worth of U.S. beef a year.

The 2008 Farm Act’s Planting Transferability Pilot Program (PTPP) allows program crop producers who participate in Federal commodity programs in seven Upper Midwestern States to plant selected vegetables destined for processing without violating Government payment contracts.

Childhood obesity is a public concern, and consumption of caloric sweetened beverages, the frequency of eating fast food, and an array of unhealthy options at schools have been named as possible culprits.

Federal dietary guidance advises Americans to increase their consumption of vegetables and fruit to meet recommended quantities and variety.

Between 2002 and 2008, fuel and fertilizer prices rose sharply, thereby contributing to substantially higher total farm energy-intensive input costs.

Most U.S. corn, soybean, and wheat production is sold through cash markets, where the producer receives the market price prevailing at the time of sale.

Net value added, net farm income, and net cash income—the three key U.S. farm sector financial indicators—are expected to improve in 2011.