Farm Commodity Policy and Obesity

Many commentators have claimed that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the “obesity epidemic” by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant and, symmetrically, that taxing “unhealthy” commodities or subsidizing “healthy” commodities would contribute to reducing obesity rates. This paper makes three contributions. First, we review evidence from the literature on the impacts on food consumption and obesity resulting from subsidies applied in the past to production or consumption of farm commodities. Second, we develop and present new arguments and preliminary evidence on the impacts of past government investments in agricultural R&D on food consumption and obesity—through research-induced increases in agricultural productivity and the consequences for prices, production, and consumption of farm commodities. Third, we consider and compare the economic efficiency of hypothetical agricultural research policies (changing the orientation of agricultural research investments) versus hypothetical agricultural commodity subsidies and taxes as alternative mechanisms for encouraging consumption of healthy food or discouraging consumption of unhealthy food, or both.Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy,

The Demand for Food in the United States: A Review of the Literature, Evaluation of Previous Estimates, and Presentation of New Estimates of Demand

Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

How have agricultural policies influenced caloric consumption in the United States?

WP 2011-12 April 2011JEL Classification Codes: I18; Q18Many commentators have speculated that agricultural policies have contributed to increased obesity rates in the United States, yet such claims are often made without any analysis of the complex links between real-world farm commodity support programs, prices and consumption of foods, and caloric intake. This article carefully studies the effects of U.S. agricultural policies on prices and quantities of ten agricultural commodities and nine food categories in the United States over time. Using a detailed multimarket model, we simulate the counterfactual removal of measures of support applied to U.S. agricultural commodities in 1992, 1997, and 2002, and quantify the effects on U.S. food consumption and caloric intake. To parameterize the simulations, we calculate three alternative measures of consumer support (the implicit consumer subsidy from policies that support producers) for the ten agricultural commodities using information about government expenditures on agricultural commodities from various sources. Our results indicate that removing subsidies on grains and oilseeds in the three time periods would have caused caloric consumption to decrease minimally while removal of all agricultural policies (including barriers against imports of sugar and dairy products) would have caused total caloric intake to increase. Our results also indicate that the influence of agricultural policies on caloric intake has diminished over time

U.S. Households’ Demand for Convenience Foods

Over the past four decades, demand for foods that save households time in meal prepa - ration and cleanup (i.e., “convenience foods”) has grown in the United States. This has implications for dietary quality and health. But little is known about the drivers behind the growth in demand for such foods. One driver might be that Americans are purchasing more processed foods because of those foods’ declining market prices rela - tive to their less processed counterparts. Another driver might be that the most adver - tised foods are those that are the most convenient or that American households have little time for meal preparation because of labor-market participation. How declining incomes affect the demand for convenience may also be a driver. Between 1999 and 2010, changes in prices and total food expenditure drove most food-purchasing patterns. Meals and snacks at fast-food restaurants were also responsive to changes in advertising expenditures, while hours worked had little effect on demand for any foods

Factors Impacting Grocery Store Deflation: A Closer Look at Prices in 2016 and 2017

Understanding the underlying factors affecting retail food prices allows farmers, food manufacturers, businesses, and consumers to better understand the future of food prices Recent retail food price deflation (2016 and 2017) has left consumers and industry, as well as academics, asking what factors have been placing downward pressure on prices and how might this pressure impact future food-at-home price inflation This report provides an indepth analysis of recent price trends, including discussion of how price changes are transmitted through the supply chain The authors build on the ERS Food Price Outlook by providing an informative supplement to the summary of retail food prices on the agency’s website