Until recently, many restaurants and fast-food places did not offer nutrition information at the point of purchase. This is expected to change because the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires that nutrition information be posted in many of these venues. Once the law is fully implemented, it will be important to understand how it has affected consumer behavior. To establish a baseline against which to measure changes in the use of onsite nutrition information about food away from home (FAFH), we examine the demographic characteristics and dietary behaviors of U.S. consumers...

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade and investment agreement under nego-tiation by 12 countries in the Pacific Rim, including the United States. This report assesses the potential impacts of eliminating all agricultural and nonagricultural tariffs and tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) under a TPP agreement on the region's agriculture in 2025-the assumed end date of the pact's implementation-compared with baseline values for 2025 without a TPP. Cutting tariffs is only one of the many goals of the TPP negotiations, but it is an important one for agricultural trade. The value of...

The first 50 years of the Federal crop insurance program were marked by low enrollment levels. To boost program participation, legislation in 1994 and 2000 increased premium subsidies. In the years since, the jump in enrollment coupled with high commodity prices caused significant increases in program costs. This report examines the effects of premium subsidies on the demand for crop insurance across major crops and produc-tion regions. Findings show that while increases in subsidies can induce farmers to enroll more land, they primarily encourage them to adopt higher levels of coverage on...

Food prices across the world rose dramatically between 2006 and 2008. The causes of the price rise were complex, and the event has led to heightened concerns regarding the implica-tions of rising food prices on the prevalence of food insecurity and household welfare, particu-larly in developing countries. Given widespread and chronic malnutrition in India and the country's large share of the world's total food-insecure population, this report estimates how Indian households coped with the rise in domestic food prices that accompanied global price patterns in 2006-08. Exploiting differential...

In 2010, a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) was established for the Chesapeake Bay, defining the limits on emissions of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment necessary to reverse declines in the Bay's quality and associated biological resources. Agriculture is the largest single source of nutrients and sediment in the watershed. We use data on crop and animal agriculture in the watershed to assess the relative effectiveness of alternative policy approaches for achieving the nutrient and sediment reduction goals of the TMDL, ranging from voluntary financial incentives to regulations. The cost of...

This report provides the latest estimates by USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) on the amount and value of food loss in the United States. These estimates are for more than 200 individual foods using ERS's Loss-Adjusted Food Availability data. In 2010, an estimated 31 percent or 133 billion pounds of the 430 billion pounds of food produced was not available for human consumption at the retail and consumer levels. This amount of loss totaled an estimated $161.6 billion, as purchased at retail prices. For the first time, ERS estimates of the calories associated with food loss are presented...

Although a rapidly growing developing country, India has a larger food-insecure population than all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Given the prevalence of chronic malnutrition, the Government of India spent nearly 1 percent of the gross domestic product in the past year on the Public Distribution System (PDS), its system of subsidies for food grains and other essential commodities. Despite the importance of effective food aid in the country, a large share of PDS food grains do not reach their intended beneficiaries. However, the Indian State of Chhattisgarh instituted a number of PDS reforms in the...

This report is a primer on the use of debt by U.S. farm businesses for policymakers, researchers, and others interested in the financial well-being of U.S. agriculture. It pres-ents data on basic debt-use patterns by farm businesses (in 2011, over 900,000 farms oper-ated as farm businesses based on their size, organizational structure, or the occupation of their principal operator) and explores key trends over 20 years. U.S. farm debt use varies widely by farm size, specialization, operator age, and other farm characteristics. Large-scale farm businesses, farm businesses with younger...

In 2008, wheat futures prices spiked and then crashed along with prices for other agri-cultural and nonagricultural commodities. Market observers offered several theories to explain this common movement, or comovement, in prices, and have proposed policies to address the perceived problem of excessive price volatility. The design of an appropriate policy response would benefit from a better understanding of the cause of the observed price movements. This study uses an econometric model to decompose observed wheat prices into a set of economic factors and measure the relative contribution of...

About 1 in 4 Americans participates in at least 1 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs at some point during the year. Together these programs, which vary by size, type of bene ts provided, and target population, form a nutritional safety net for millions of children and low-income adults. These programs account for over 70 percent of USDA's annual budget. USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) conducts studies and evaluations of these programs. This report uses preliminary administrative data from USDA's Food and Nutrition Service...