Fred Kuchler

United States Department of Agriculture | USDA · Economic Research Service (ERS)

US per capita milk consumption has been falling since the 1940s and falling at an accelerated rate in recent years. One possible reason is competition between it and other types of beverages. In this study, we determine whether changes in beverage prices are in a direction and of a sufficient magnitude for consumption trends to be explained by pric...

Retail sales of fluid cow’s milk are decreasing while those of plant-based milk analogues are increasing. In this study, we model the relationship between households’ purchases of both types of products and perform simulations. Results show that growing consumer demand for plant-based products is causing cow’s milk sales to decline somewhat faster...

Objective The number of states in the USA that allows sales of raw milk for human consumption has been trending upwards and reached thirty-eight in 2016. These legislative changes could encourage raw milk consumption. The current study examined the determinants of weekly raw milk use by at-home meal preparers in the USA. Design Using the 2014–2016...

In the USA, food producers can label their products as organic only if they are certified by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as having met comprehensive regulatory standards for environmental stewardship. In contrast, the Federal Government has not defined the term natural for most food products. Survey and experimental studies s...

This report explores economic drivers of fresh-produce (i.e., fruits and vegetables) loss on the farm and in pre-retail sectors. Price volatility, labor costs and availability, supply chain constraints, retail and consumer quality standards, contract incentives, and existing policy are identified as factors influencing food loss on farms and in dis...

From May to November most romaine lettuce shipments in the United States come from California’s Central Coast region, whereas from December to April most come from the Yuma, Arizona, region. During 2017–2018, the 3 outbreaks of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 in US romaine lettuce all occurred at the tail end of a region’s pro...

This chapter presents a theoretical economic approach to studying food loss and yields a perspective on the importance of losses and the trade-offs inherent in policies intended to address that loss. It focuses on the produce industry and shows that total food loss can be difficult to justify as an economic problem. The chapter identifies what is c...

While much of the established literature on food loss in the United States focuses on food retailers and consumers (Buzby, Wells, and Hyman, 2014), understanding of farm-to-retail food loss is more limited. In December 2017, the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) hosted a workshop titled “Farm-to-Retail Food Loss in Produce: An Exploratory Discus...

In this report on the at-home, food-safety practices of the U.S. population, researchers investigate the application of two Food and Drug Administration-recommended food-safety practices by taking a closer look at the estimated 14 percent of at-home meal preparers who use meat thermometers when preparing meat and the 2 percent who use nonpasteurize...

Consumers are increasingly interested in farming methods and the nutritional quality of food. Manufacturers, in turn, are adding more information to food labels. In 1990, Congress passed two watershed laws on food labeling, one requiring nutrition labels to be included on most processed foods and the other requiring organic foods to meet a national...

In December 2003, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in the United States. This food safety event received extensive media coverage and prompted changes in regulatory controls. Using a panel selection model, we show that prior to December 2003, ground beef recalls had no impact on household purchases of ground beef, even for hous...

Voluntary labeling improves market efficiency if consumers receive the product characteristics they demand and producers are compensated for producing these characteristics. For this to occur, label claims have to be truthful, credible, and understandable. We examine the introduction of “Raised Without Antibiotics” (RWA) label claims in the broiler...

This article provides a means for testing whether buyers or sellers are responsible for a drop in sales following a market shock. We show that suppliers’ responses dominated the market reaction to the 2006 US Food and Drug Administration warning to avoid fresh spinach contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria Escherichia coli O157:H7. A modifie...

In recent years, produce imports to the United States from the southern hemisphere made wintertime consumption common. Focusing on imports of fresh berries – strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries – this study asks what is the value to consumers of increasing the availability of berries in winter? The study adapts Hausman's new pro...

This report explores the structure and function of the U.S. nutrition research system, with an emphasis on trends in Federal support. It describes how nutrition research is used, especially for nutrition education and communication, but also for regulation and food assistance. The report uses the Human Nutrition Research Information Management data...

This report explores the structure and function of the U.S. nutrition research system, with an emphasis on trends in Federal support. It describes how nutrition research is used, especially for nutrition education and communication, but also for regulation and food assistance. The report uses the Human Nutrition Research Information Management data...

Federal agencies that are charged with giving dietary advice to consumers-the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services- recommend that consumers keep their intake of trans fatty acids as low as possible. To that end, Federal regulations now require food labels to say how many grams of trans fats are in eac...

Health and safety officials are sometimes placed in an awkward position: knowing that a foodborne disease outbreak is occurring but not knowing which food is responsible. They have to advise consumers, but relying on ambiguous and evolving information raises the question, how do consumers respond to changing advice? Here, we estimate a model of the...

We estimate an error correction model representing demand for leafy green vegetables but generalize the structure to allow for adjustment to one conspicuous shock. We investigate whether the adjustment rate to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2006 warning that fresh spinach was contaminated with deadly bacteria was distinct from the...

Purpose – This chapter investigates the role that mandatory genetically modified (GM) labeling versus voluntary labeling has played in the split between those countries with small GM markets and those with large GM markets. Methodology/approach – Data on product introductions and other market evidence are used to examine market outcomes and identif...

Since the early 1990s, the retail market for leafy green vegetables has been divided between largely unprocessed products and bagged salads. The latter embody kitchen labor and economize on storage costs, in effect offering consumers convenience as a product attribute. Using time-series retail purchase data, this paper shows that changes in income...

The federal government has issued Dietary Guidelines for Americans seven times since 1980, but the 2005 whole-grain recommendation was the first instance in which consumers were given a specific dietary target, that whole grains should be at least half of their grain consumption. Anecdotal evidence pointed to a unique result, an increase in demand...

Seafood was the first class of foods to fall under the 2002 US regulatory requirements for mandatory country-of-origin labelling (COOL). If this regulation created benefits for consumers, filling an information void by demanding information that the market did not, then there should have been an observable response in the demand for seafood. To gau...

Being diagnosed with a diet-related health condition like high blood cholesterol might compel an individual to choose a healthier diet, thereby reducing disease risks. Adding the option of medication, like statins, makes the direction of diet-quality choices theoretically ambiguous. This study estimates how dietary quality correlates with high chol...

A retail demand model measured the impact of the Food and Drug Administration’s 2006 announcement warning consumers about E. coli O157: H7 contamination in spinach. Model results indicated that bulk lettuces were shock substitutes (in contrast to price substitutes) as consumers purchased fewer spinach products and more bulk lettuce of all types. Re...

Consumers responded to the Food and Drug Administration’s September 2006 warnings to avoid eating spinach because of possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7. While spinach expenditures fell, consumers turned to other leafy greens as substitutes. The longer term drop in retail expenditures on fresh spinach products was almost matched by gains...

In 2006 FDA announced that consumers should not eat fresh spinach in the wake of a large foodborne illness outbreak of E. coli O157:H7. This paper investigates response of consumers to the announcement. We use an AIDS demand model with 5 food safety shock variables and retail scanner data to analyze market response. Even fifteen months after the ou...

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole-grains. This case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole-grain food products. We find that release of the Dietary Guidelines and...

An increase in the price of fruits and vegetables relative to less healthy foods could reduce consumers’ incentives to purchase fruits and vegetables and result in less healthy diets. Whether such a change in relative prices and incentives has occurred in the United States is difficult to prove because of substantial quality improvements in many fr...

To better understand how information about potential health hazards influences food demand, this case study examines consumers’ responses to newspaper articles on avian influenza, informally referred to as bird flu. The focus here is on the response to bird flu information in Italy as news about highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza (HPAI H5N1) un...

The potential impacts of a food safety event on consumer demand for meat is of significant concern to producers, packers, processors, retail businesses, and the USDA. This study investigates whether publicized food safety information from the printed media on beef, pork, and poultry, impacts the demand for these commodities. A four commodity comple...

This study examines consumers’ retail purchases of beef and beef products for evidence of a response to the 2003 U.S. government announcements of finding cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). We constructed weekly estimates of quantities of beef products consumers purchased from 1998 through 2004 using ACNielsen Homescan d...

This paper investigates consumers' likely response to a proposed tax on snack foods that addresses public health issues generated by rising U.S. obesity rates. We estimate demands for particular snack foods and show they are price inelastic after accounting for quality variation. We calculate impacts of a range of ad valorem taxes on the demand for...

Americans are increasingly overweight, with the number of obese adults and overweight children doubling between the late 1970s and early 2000s. Several studies of the health consequences of Americans’ weight gain indicate that health care costs and the number of premature deaths associated with obesity and overweight are high. A recent (lower) es...

This investigation into the traceability baseline in the United States finds that private sector food firms have developed a substantial capacity to trace. Traceability systems are a tool to help firms manage the flow of inputs and products to improve efficiency, product differentiation, food safety, and product quality. Firms balance the private c...

Obesity is a sizable problem. Gaps in consumer information and the contribution of obesity to societal costs raise the possibility for government policy actions. However, any such action must be justified by benefits in excess of policy-induced costs.

The research agendas of psychologists and economists now have several overlaps, with behavioural economics providing theoretical and experimental study of the relationship between behaviour and choice, and hedonic psychology discussing appropriate measures of outcomes of choice in terms of overall utility or life satisfaction. Here we model the rel...

The regulatory systems in place prior to the development and expansion of agricultural biotechnology are still responding to this new form of technology. Such systems include trade law, intellectual property law, contract law, environmental regulations and biosafety regulations. This book reviews these reforms which are aimed at achieving a regulat...

Abstract

To examine the agreement between individuals' weight status as measured by their body mass index (BMI) and their perceptions of their weight status in the US population. Data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-94 (NHANES III), were used to cross-tabulate actual weight status and self-assessed weight status, identi...

Traceability systems are record-keeping systems that are primarily used to help keep foods with different attributes separate from one another. When information about a particular attribute of a food product is systematically recorded from creation through marketing, traceability for that attribute is established. Recently, policy makers in many co...

To determine which dietary and lifestyle choices and which attitudes toward diet and health most contribute to adiposity and whether those factors differ by gender. Multiple regression was used to estimate the effect of energy intake, energy expenditure, resources, demographics, and attitudes toward diet and health on self-reported body mass index...

Whether biotech agricultural products should be labeled has become an issue of contention both within the United States and between the United States and its trading partners.1 Economists tend to argue that labeling and product differentiation of biotech and nonbiotech commodities and food products would expand consumer welfare. Such labeling would...

New rules issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture requiring provision of nutrition information on raw meat and poultry products may encourage consumers to make healthier food choices. Reduced intake of fat and cholesterol may prevent future cases of stroke, heart disease, and cancer. The benefits of these rules are estimated to be 62 to62 to 1...

Because each Federal agency uses a different valuation method to estimate the costs of illness, it is difficult to compare programs across agencies. As a first step toward generating a consensus on the current state of knowledge and deciding on a common approach, several agencies planned this conference, held September 14-15, 2000, at the Universit...

New rules issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture requiring provision of nutrition information on raw meat and poultry products may encourage consumers to make healthier food choices. Reduced intake of fat and cholesterol may prevent future cases of stroke, heart disease, and cancer. The benefits of these rules are estimated to be $62 to $125...

There are many options for controlling the spread of animal diseases. Some diseases have been treated as public sector problems and many nations have tried to control disease spread by purchasing sick animals from farmers. Government agencies have purchased breeding stock that might transmit diseases. Government agencies have purchased animals that...

This paper examines whether the dollar value of health benefits that consumers derive from organic food could account for the price premiums they pay. Price and sales data from realized transactions are inadequate to reveal consumer preferences for health benefits. Our exploratory alternative method estimates the value of health benefits to a hypot...

Federal intervention in food labeling is often proposed with the aim of achieving a social goal such as improving human health and safety, mitigating environmental hazards, averting international trade disputes, or supporting domestic agricultural and food manufacturing industries. Economic theory suggests, however, that mandatory food-labeling req...

We examine five approaches economists and health policy analysts have developed for evaluating policy affecting health a safety: cost-of-illness, willingness-to-pay, cost-effectiveness analysis, risk-risk analysis, and health-health analysis. We examine the theoretical basis and empirical application of each approach and investigate the influences...

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) finances about 13.5 percent of its budget outlays through user fees for overtime and unscheduled meat and poultry inspections. User fees play an increasingly important role in financing government programs, and FSIS has frequently requested expanded authority to charge user fees for more of its opera...

Recent pesticide policy initiatives focus on reducing risks through agricultural research on pest control alternatives. This paper illustrates how research resources could be targeted to reduce risks to food consumers from dietary pesticide residue intake. For 50 chemicals on 10 fruits and vegetables, we estimate consumers' dietary intake of pestic...

Newly available data from USDA's Pesticide Data Program allow us to trace pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables to their sources among various uses. We show that pesticide residues come from four sources: on-farm pesticide use; post-harvest pesticide use; pesticide use on imported food; and canceled pesticides that persist in the environment....

A set of rigorous diagnostic tools is used to evaluate the forecasting performance of five farmland value models. The models are two variations of the present-value model (PV1 and PV2), an ARIMA, a vector autoregression (VAR), and an error-correcting model (ECM). One- and three-period-ahead out-of-sample forecasts are evaluated in terms of forecast...

We examine the concomitant claims that agricultural land can be regarded as a fixed factor of production and that rents derived from government policies accrue only to landowners. Characteristics of the long-run, equilibrium relation between farmland rental payments and government policies reveal whether farmland is a fixed factor of production. Ex...

Regression methods previously employed to study stock price movements are used to test how well the present value model under rational expectations explains farmland price movements. Based on data on farmland prices and rents (returns to landownership) covering the period 1921-89 from three agricultural regions in the United States, the empirical r...

We conduct tests for the contribution of speculative bubbles to farmland prices. These tests are carried out under the hypothesis that farmland investors rationally form expectations. The outcome of tests reported here allows us to infer whether farmland prices are determined by market fundamentals--discounted returns from the highest economic land...

Granger has demonstrated that if two variables are integrated of order one and are conitegrated, they can be modelled as having been generated by an error correction mechanism. Cointegration and error correction systems allow long-run components of variables to obey equilibrium constraints while short-run components are allowed to have flexible dyn...

We consider how best to characterize agricultural real estate market participants' expectation formation mechanism. The expectation formation mechanism links current agricultural policies to asset prices and tells us how current policies change expectations for future transfers. We examine behavior of real estate prices and returns using the presen...

A growing number of economic studies simulate the effects of widespread adoption of bovine growth hormone (bGH) on the dairy industry. Based on the expectation of large per-cow yield increases due to the use of bGH, these studies assume fast rates of adoption and diffusion of the hormone. The objective of this paper is to analyze the farm-level inc...

Economic simulation studies of the effects of bovine growth hormone (bGH) on the dairy industry usually assume that producers will have the incentive to adopt bGH and that aggregate milk supply will increase. Based on the description of per-cow milk yield response to bovine growth hormone (bGH), a short-run model of milk production is developed to...

Economic simulation studies of the effects of bovine growth hormone (bGH) on the dairy industry usually assume that producers will have the incentive to adopt bGH and that aggregate milk supply will increase. Based on the description of per-cow milk yield response to bovine growth hormone (bGH), a short-run model of milk production is developed to...

EPA examines the benefits and risks of an agricultural pesticide's use when deciding whether or not to cancel its registration, but often neglects two effects which could change the decision: (1) the distributional effects on farmers using and not using the pesticide, and (2) the interdependence among regulatory decisions. This article examines the...

The spectacular nature of many of the breakthroughs in biotechnology has generated considerable publicity and has made demands on agricultural economics for ex ante assessment of potential impacts. This article suggests a research agenda for evaluating the impacts of biotechnology on agricultural production. It reviews the regulatory history to ide...

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This paper generalizes the standard error correction model and applies this more general modeling procedure to an analysis of the spinach e-coli outbreak on consumer demand.

This paper investigates consumers' likely response to a proposed tax on snack foods that addresses public health issues generated by rising U.S. obesity rates. We estimate demands for particular snack foods and show they are price inelastic after accounting for quality variation. We calculate impacts of a range of ad valorem taxes on the demand for...

Both at home and abroad concerns about genetically modified foods have disrupted food markets and raised a number of problems for international trade. This paper addresses the issue of labeling foods produced using genetically modified ingredients from an economic perspective. The wide range of consumer attitudes with respect to food safety and gen...

Government intervention in agricultural markets may be warranted under circumstances where markets fail to allocate resources efficiently.