High food prices in 2008 and 2010 generated concern about food security in developing countries. The number of food insecure people was estimated to have jumped significantly and food assistance donors were faced with unexpectedly high procurement bills. This paper discusses how high food prices...

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...

In the last 25 years, U.S. crop farms have steadily declined in number and grown in average size, as production has shifted to larger operations. Larger farms tend to receive more commodity program payments because most payments are tied to a farm’s current or historical production, but...

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...

International trade in wheat accounts for approximately one third of world grain trade and is expected to double by 2050.The KRU (Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine) countries account for approximately a quarter of world wheat exports and are collectively considered one of the key wheat exporting...

A number of major agricultural exporting countries responded to high food prices from 2007 to 2010 by imposing export restrictions on agricultural commodities in efforts to constrain domestic food-price inflation. These restrictions reduced the volume of internationally traded food, and...