Pesticide use has changed considerably over the past five decades. Rapid growth characterized the first 20 years, ending in 1981. The total quantity of pesticides applied to the 21 crops analyzed grew from 196 million pounds of pesticide active ingredients in 1960 to 632 million pounds in 1981....

Ten years after the first generation of genetically engineered (GE) varieties became commercially available, adoption of these varieties by U.S. farmers is widespread for major crops. Driven by farmers' expectations of higher yields, savings in management time, and lower pesticide costs, the...

Rural residents have higher rates of age-adjusted mortality, disability, and chronic disease than their urban counterparts, though mortality and disability rates vary more by region than by metro status. Contributing negatively to the health status of rural residents are their lower...

This study tracks food products introduced from 1989 to 2010 to better understand the adoption of voluntary health- and nutrition-related claims by companies. New food products introduced with health- and nutrition-related claims accounted for 43.1 percent of all new U.S. food product...

This report relies on fi ndings from several national surveys and current literature to assess water resource use and conservation measures within the U.S. irrigated crop sector. U.S. agriculture accounts for 80-90 percent of the Nation’s consumptive water use (water lost to the environment by...

Since 2003, direct payments have accounted for a signifi cant portion of farm program payments. If direct payments were eliminated, many agricultural producers would be affected, both through the loss of income and potential declines in land values and rental rates. This report considers the...

The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) farm typology was originally developed to classify farms into relatively homogeneous groups based on their gross farm sales, the primary occupation of their operators, and whether the farms are family farms. Nearly 15 years have passed since ERS first...

This report uses preliminary administrative data from USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the agency responsible for managing the programs, to examine trends in the food and nutrition assistance programs through fi scal 2013 (October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013). The report uses ERS...

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 presents data on basic debt-use patterns by farm businesses (in 2011, over 900,000 farms operated as farm businesses based...

According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, 294,000 farms operated on 10 or fewer acres in 2007. While most small acreage (SA) operations did very little farming, approximately 50,000 SA farms had gross sales of $10,000 or more in 2007; 3,600 reported grossing $500,000 or more. Thus, a limited land...