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And, just to show you how valuable a resource Amber Waves is, below is the TOC of this month’s issue.
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by Rachel Johnson and Amy Hagerman
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.
Markets and Trade
by Constanza Valdes and Nicholas Rada
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.
by Suresh Persaud
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.
by Donald Blayney and Hayden Stewart
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.
by Kenneth Mathews, Rachel Johnson, and Keithly Jones
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.
Diet and Health
by Ilya Rahkovsky
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.
by Patrick Canning
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.
by Andrea Carlson and Elizabeth Frazao
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.
by Jeanine Bentley
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.
Resources and Environment
by Glenn Schaible and Marcel Aillery
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.
by Elizabeth Marshall and Marca Weinberg
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.
Farms, Firms, and Households
by Jeremy Weber and Nigel Key
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.
by Hisham El-Osta and Mary Ahearn
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.
STATISTICS
Data Feature
by Nora Brooks and Birgit Meade
Middle-income countries, including Mexico and China, continue to grow as key partners in U.S. agricultural trade. In 2011, the United States shipped nearly half of its total agricultural exports to upper middle-income countries.
Selected statistics on agriculture and trade, diet and health, natural resources, and rural America
On the Map: The Conservation Challenge for Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture
Nearly 57 million acres were irrigated across the United States in 2007, about 7.5 percent of all agricultural cropland and pastureland.
In the Long Run: Share of Food Spending by Source
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New or updated information is available from
USDA ERS. See new items in all topics at
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This updated covers Monday, September 17, 2012 to Friday, September 21, 2012
Amber Waves presents the broad scope of ERS's research and analysis. The magazine covers the economics of agriculture, food and nutrition, the food industry, trade, rural America, and farm-related environmental topics.
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