The sources in this chapter cover agriculture broadly defined, including not just growing crops and raising animals for food but also forestry, fishing, and other activities that involve harvesting living things for economic purposes. In addition to production, the consumption of food is covered by some of the listed sources.
Major Sources: United States
Economic Research Service (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
National Agricultural Statistics Service (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is, along with the Department of Commerce, one of only two cabinet-level departments that contain two major federal statistical agencies. Collectively, these two agencies, the Economic Research Service of the USDA (ERS, www.ers.usda.gov) and the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS, www.nass.usda.gov), provide much of the easily available agricultural data for the United States.
The boundary between data one should expect to find through the ERS and through NASS is often fuzzy. In general, NASS is more concerned with data about agricultural production (e.g., number of acres devoted to growing specific crops, cost of renting or buying farmland, amounts of pesticides and fertilizers used by farmers, prices farmers receive for their crops), whereas the ERS is more concerned with data about agricultural and food policy (e.g., agricultural productivity rates, quality of life and federal spending in rural areas, prices consumers pay for their groceries). However, the ERS disseminates, and in some cases does additional analyses of, data collected by many other statistical agencies, including the Census Bureau and NASS, when that data relates to agriculture, food, or rural life.
The ERS is also a good source for data about the foods that Americans eat.1 Through its Food Availability (per Capita) Data System, the ERS provides detailed, time-series information on the availability of various types of food, from chili peppers to flour, often going back several decades—as far as 1909 for some major commodities, including milk, beef, pork, and sugar. Because the USDA manages the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, colloquially known as “food stamps”), county-level time-series data about the number of people receiving food assistance benefits and the dollar value of those benefits is available through the ERS as well.
NASS is responsible for the Census of Agriculture, an every-five-year survey covering every farm in the United States, as well as a bevy of smaller, often more frequent surveys covering everything from catfish farms to Christmas tree production. If it can be grown or raised in the United States, NASS probably has at least some data about its production. A full list of topics covered in NASS surveys is available on the NASS website (www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/index.asp), along with links to the relevant surveys. The frequency of these surveys varies. Some are monthly (e.g., Agricultural Yield Survey, Chickens and Eggs Survey) or annual (Organic Production Survey). Others are less frequent: every three years (e.g., Nursery and Christmas Tree Survey, Nursery and Floriculture Chemical Use Survey), every five years (On-Farm Energy Production Survey), or even every ten years (Census of Horticultural Specialties). County-level and ZIP code–level data from the Census of Agriculture about agricultural production, the demographics of farmers, and farm income is available on the NASS site, as are links to reports containing data from the other NASS surveys.
Food and Agriculture Organization (United Nations)
Internationally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the major source for statistics on agriculture and food. FAO’s definition of agriculture is broad, encompassing forestry, fisheries, and water and soil conditions affecting agriculture as well as growing crops.
Most FAO data is in the FAOSTAT database (http://faostat3.fao.org), which covers the production of and international trade in crops, livestock, and wood products; producer prices for a variety of crops; measures of the amount of food and nutrients available to the population of a given country; spending on agricultural machinery and other capital investments; use of fertilizers and pesticides; and related topics. The interface is conveniently divided into sections for different types of users; selecting the options to browse or compare data automatically takes users into a highly graphical interface that provides data highlights, primarily in chart and graph form; selecting the options to search or download data allows advanced users to download data in spreadsheet form for further analysis.
Another database, the GIEWS Food Price Data and Analysis Tool (www.fao.org/giews/pricetool/), provides monthly time-series data on the prices of specific food items in specific cities, primarily in developing countries. Data is available from 1990 to present, although there is more data for more recent years. The food items vary by country, depending on the cuisine of the area; the prices of rice, wheat, and maize are reported for many areas, but the price of chickpeas is reported only for cities in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and India and for the country of Tunisia, for example.
The FAO also maintains separate databases with information on specific aspects of food and agriculture, such as livestock production, fisheries, and water resources. Many of these databases can be accessed via the “Statistics” page on the FAO site. Databases with detailed information about land use and soil conditions are listed on the “Databases/Information Systems” page in the “Land Resources” section of the site. Much of the data accessed via the latter list is geospatial data designed for GIS use.
Minor Sources
World Food Programme
Another UN agency with a stake in data about food availability is the World Food Programme, which distributes food aid to areas threatened with famine in the wake of disasters or wars. Its Food Aid Information System (www.wfp.org/fais/) reports data from 1988 to present on the types and quantities of international food aid provided to various countries, the donors (countries or international organizations) who provided the food aid, and the nutritional value of that aid.
International Food Policy Research Institute
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI, www.ifpri.org), headquartered in Washington, DC, has been publishing research into policies that can help fight hunger and malnutrition since 1975. After completing a free registration, users can access all of the data sets used in IFPRI’s published research. These include both household-level surveys covering families’ food consumption, finances, and additional topics as well as macroeconomic data sets, including “social accounting matrices” for many countries. These social accounting matrices include data on the flow of money and commodities, particularly agricultural commodities, through a nation’s economy.
OECD.StatExtracts (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Eurostat (European Union)
The general statistics databases for the OECD and European Union both contain information about agriculture in their member countries and beyond. In OECD.StatExtracts (covered more fully in chapter 2), that data includes estimates of the amount and type of agricultural and food-related subsidies provided directly to farmers, to consumers, and to support agriculture in the country generally, in both OECD and non-OECD countries. The EU’s Eurostat database (see chapter 2), which contains data on EU member countries only, includes data on the number, size, and type of farms per country; the amount of crops and livestock produced and land farmed organically; the amount of fish wild-caught in the oceans and seas near Europe and the amount farm-raised; and statistics about fishing fleets; farming-related environmental indicators such as pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and fertilizer use and the extent of irrigation; land-use data; forestry statistics; and data on many other agriculture-related topics.
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Statistical Database
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (http://w3.unece.org/pxweb/) database has detailed data for several dozen European forestry-related variables, typically beginning in 1990 and reported every five years. Available data sets include the number of square hectares of forest, the number of square hectares of forest damaged by forces ranging from storms to insect infestations, various measures of the biological diversity of the forests, and various measures of the economic benefits of forests, from the amount of wood harvested to the number of people employed in manufacturing wood and paper products. Data is available by country, by forest or “other wooded land,” and, for some variables, by forest type (e.g., alpine forest, broadleaved evergreen forest, floodplain forest).
UnctadStat (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) maintains price data on agricultural commodities in its UnctadStat database (http://unctadstat.unctad.org, “Commodities” tab). This data has a longer time series than the data in the GIEWS Food Price Data and Analysis Tool (discussed above), covering 1960 to present for some commodities and some countries.
Note
1. Another good source of data about the foods Americans eat is the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, covered in chapter 19.