Intellectual property protection, globalization, and pressure on public budgets in many industrialized countries have shifted the balance of plant breeding activity from the public to the private sector. Several economic factors influence the relative shares of public versus private sector plant...

ERS recently constructed a new set of regions depicting geographic specialization in production of U.S. farm commodities. ERS will use the new regions to display results of its analyses in a broad array of venues from briefings to publications, our web site, and journal articles. This pamphlet...

Restructuring of U.S. banking markets has raised concerns that insufficient access to loanable funds will limit economic growth in some rural areas. Access to nonlocal funds can provide public benefits through enhanced competition and efficiency, but subsidized access to nonlocal funds can...

Even though farming accounts for only about 1 percent of the total national workforce, it is at the core of the food and fiber system. The system is one of the largest sectors in the U.S. economy, and is comprised of industries related to farming, including feed, seed, fertilizer, machinery,...

Farmers have been developing organic farming systems in the United States for decades. State and private institutions also began emerging during this period to set organic farming standards and provide third-party verification of label claims, and legislation requiring national standards was...

In 1914, the Cooperative Extension Service was established to disseminate information about agriculture and home economics from land-grant universities to the U.S. public. At that time, about 30 percent of U.S. workers were in agriculture-related occupations; by the late 1990s, that share had...

Meat trade flows among countries and world regions are determined largely by differences among countries in their resource base, their preferences for meat types and cuts, the extent and character of barriers to trade, and the industry structure. Future growth of meat trade depends on further...