Maritime freight transport has experienced strong growth and profound change over recent decades. Freight volumes and container traffic in particular have grown with the ntensification of global trade and the geographical dispersion of production. The industrial organization of the sector has...

Indonesia’s food market has changed in response to a changing and growing economy. The report examines changes in the food consumption pattern and measures the growth of modern food retail chains, packaged food purchases, and food imports in the world’s fourth-most-populous country. The...

The extent to which cost changes pass through a vertically organized production process depends on the value added by each producer in the chain as well as a number of other organizational and marketing factors at each stage of production. Using 36 years of monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics...

During most of 2005-10, the price of expiring U.S. corn, soybeans, and wheat futures contracts settled much higher than corresponding delivery market cash prices. Because futures contracts at expiration are commonly thought to be equivalent to cash grain, this commodity price non-convergence...

This report examines current trends in the U.S. grain industry. Many identity preservation(IP) grain systems have emerged recently, driven by a confluence of supply and demand factors. IP grain requirements for specific production protocols, marketing channels, and quality assurance depend on...

Small U.S. farms and those run by socially disadvantaged minority operators tend not to purchase insurance or to participate in insurance-type programs operated by USDA. This report traces the lack of use of such risk management measures to several characteristics of such farmers, who include...

Authorized by the 2008 Farm Act, the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program is the first revenue-based, income-support program that calculates payments using recent market prices and a producer’s actual plantings. The payments are triggered when a farm’s revenue and State revenue...

This book contains a sampling of recent ERS research illustrating the breadth of the Agency’s research on current policy issues: from biofuels to food consumption to land conservation to patterns of trade for agricultural products. What you won’t find in this collection is any mention of...

Early-warning systems for plant diseases are valuable when the systems provide timely forecasts that farmers can use to inform their pest management decisions. To evaluate the value of the systems, this study examines, as a case study, USDA’s coordinated framework for soybean rust...