The traditional structural transformation narrative emphasizes intersectoral labour reallocation out of agriculture, ignoring whether workers exit agrifood value chains or merely migrate within them. Here we decompose multiregional input-output table data into industry- and country-specific annual labour value-added estimates by final consumer market segment, matching them with industry-specific employment data to estimate average worker compensation. Using data covering most of the global economy over 1993-2021, we report ten stylized facts about labour reallocation amid structural transformation. As incomes grow, labour exits primary production while downstream agrifood value chain segments maintain a steady economy-wide employment share-offering jobs that pay better than farm work. Women disproportionately move from primary production to downstream, consumer-facing retail and food service, whereas men migrate to better-paying midstream jobs, increasing gender pay inequality within the value chain. Employment shifts are strongly associated with changes in national per capita income, but not with agricultural total factor productivity growth.

The global agri-food value chains (GAFVCs) are complex networks involving a range of regions, industries, and resources (such as labor, capital, and imported inputs). The global value chains in the agri-food sector are of critical importance to the world’s food security, as well as its environmental and human health outcomes. Although the transformation of agri-food GVCs merits greater attention to design public and private interventions to promote economic and environmental sustainability, there is a dearth of research that quantifies the distribution of consumer food expenditures of value-added activities along the GVCs. In order to address this knowledge gap, by using Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and United Nations (UN) statistical databases, we estimated the distribution of value added along the agri-food GVCs by primary factors (i.e., operating surplus, labor, taxes and subsidies, and imports) and by five major industry groups (i.e., agriculture, forestry, and fishing; wholesale, retail, and motor vehicle repair services; transportation; accommodation and food services; and manufacture of food products, beverages, and tobacco). In addition to describing the methodology for decomposing food dollars, this study applied the decomposition results to evaluate countries’ vulnerabilities to the GAFVCs disruptions, as an example of how to apply the extended food dollar series to conduct systematic, global, and economy-wide research. This effort provides a more comprehensive understanding of the different stages of the agri-food GVCs across regions, and the interactions between supply chain stages, primary factors, and regions, which contributes to the achievement of many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in GAFVCs.

Suppressions in public data severely limit the usefulness of spatial data and hinder research applications. In this context, data imputation is necessary to deal with suppressed values. We present and validate a flexible data imputation method that can aid in the completion of under-determined data systems. The validations use Monte Carlo and optimisation modelling techniques to recover suppressed data tables from the 2017 US Census of Agriculture. We then use econometric models to evaluate the accuracy of imputations from alternative models. Various metrics of forecast accuracy (i.e., MAPE, BIC, etc.) show the flexibility and capacity of this approach to accurately recover suppressed data. To illustrate the value of our method, we compare the livestock water withdrawal estimations with imputed data and suppressed data to show the bias in research applications when suppressions are simply dropped from analysis.

This chapter aims to provide an introductory “how to” guide to using environmental input-output (EIO) models to measures of both direct and indirect environmental impacts of food systems across all economic sectors. The background and a basic framework of the EIO model are presented with technical details. Following that, the methodology is demonstrated by a U.S. food economy EIO model application. Through a detailed discussion and application example of the EIO model, modelers will have the opportunity to gain insight into the development of environmental impact assessments of food systems across economic sectors.

Progress towards many United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depends on interventions in food value chains, yet data and methods have thus far limited the production of cross-nationally comparable estimates of food value chains’ magnitudes. Here we develop a standardized method and data series to estimate the distribution of consumer food expenditures between value-added activities on farms and in the post-farmgate value chain. Using data from 61 countries over 2005–2015, representing 90% of the global economy, we show that farmers receive, on average, 27% of consumer expenditure on foods consumed at home and a far lower percentage of food consumed away from home. That figure consistently falls in the 16–38% range for middle- and high-income countries and falls significantly as incomes rise. The large and growing post-farmgate food value chain merits greater attention as the world grapples with the economic, environmental and social impacts of food systems. The distribution of consumer food expenditures across value-added activities on farms and in the post-farmgate value chain, although important, has been overlooked. Building on a global food dollar series, this study shows how the farm and post-farmgate shares of consumer food expenditures evolve in response to changing economic, demographic and agricultural conditions in different regions.

Water is a key input for food production. It is used on farms to grow crops, raise livestock, clean processing equipment, generate electricity, and rinse produce. While water is important, available freshwater for human use is scarce. Much like other natural resources, freshwater is faced with supply and demand stresses, including population growth, climate change, and changing consumer preferences.

An ERS study found mixed impacts on five natural resources if, in 2007, all Americans had adopted a diet in keeping with Federal recommendations. The U.S. food system’s use of agricultural land, fossil fuels, and forest products would have fallen, freshwater withdrawals would have increased, and greenhouse gas emissions would have remained essentially unchanged.

Participants in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) generally spend their benefits soon after receiving them, spending that has cascading effects through the economy. A recent ERS analysis finds that during a slowing economy, $1 billion in new SNAP benefits would increase GDP by $1.54 billion and support 13,560 jobs, including 480 agricultural jobs.

We estimate the impact on greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) of shifting from the current average United States diet to four alternative diets that meet the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). In contrast to prior studies, which rely on process-based life-cycle-analysis GHGE estimates from the literature for particular food items, we combine a diet model, an environmentally extended input-output model of energy use in the U.S. food system, and a biophysical model of land use for crops and livestock to estimate food system GHGE from the combustion of fossil fuels and from biogenic sources, including enteric fermentation, manure management, and soil management. We find that an omnivore diet that meets the DGA while constraining cost leaves food system GHGE essentially unchanged relative to the current baseline diet (985 000 000 tons of CO2 eq or 3191 kilograms of CO2 eq per capita per year), while a DGA-compliant vegetarian and a DGA-compliant omnivore diet that minimizes energy consumption in the food system reduce GHGE by 32% and 22%, respectively. These emission reductions were achieved mainly through quantity and composition changes in the meat, poultry, fish; dairy; and caloric sweeteners categories. Shifting from current to healthy diets as defined by the DGA does not necessarily reduce GHGE in the U.S. food system, although there are diets, including two presented here and by inference many others, which can achieve a reduction in GHGE.

Food hubs are of interest in regional and local food system development because they potentially enhance the sustainability of food supply chains. Expanding on earlier literature, this study introduces economies of scale into an aggregation hub location model and disaggregates production into four seasons to account for geographic and seasonal variation of US fresh produce production. A mixed integer linear programming model is formulated with the objective of minimizing total costs of assembly and first-handler operations. Results suggest scale economies have significant effects on the optimal number, locations, and sizes of aggregation hubs. We model regional and local food systems in a manner more consistent with economic theory and provide a richer framework for policy analysis.

Interest in supporting local and regional food systems is rising and food hubs have attracted considerable attention among Federal, State, and local policymakers. This study explores the problem of endogenous hub location in fresh produce value chains in the Northeastern United States. To overcome limitations in the literature, we incorporate the effects of economies of scale and production seasonality into our models. Three experimental models are designed to examine the effects of alternatively applying yearly, quarterly, and monthly data on model solutions. We explicitly assess how interactions of scale economies and seasonality influence the structure and spatial attributes of an optimal regional produce aggregation hub system. The three models generate marketed different solutions and in many respects they lead to different conclusions about developing local/regional supply chains. The monthly model allows for production seasonality and actual hub operation cycle frequency and thus leads to more efficient hub solution with rich policy implications.

Interest in supporting local and regional food systems is rising and food hubs have attracted considerable attention among Federal, State, and local policymakers. This study explores the problem of endogenous hub location in fresh produce value chains in the Northeastern United States. To overcome limitations in the literature, we incorporate the effects of economies of scale and production seasonality into our models. Three experimental models are designed to examine the effects of alternatively applying yearly, quarterly, and monthly data on model solutions. We explicitly assess how interactions of scale economies and seasonality influence the structure and spatial attributes of an optimal regional produce aggregation hub system. The three models generate marketed different solutions and in many respects they lead to different conclusions about developing local/regional supply chains. The monthly model allows for production seasonality and actual hub operation cycle frequency and thus leads to more efficient hub solution with rich policy implications.

Food systems worldwide rely on water resources that are facing demand from a growing population while regional water supplies are increasingly uncertain due to climate change. In this environment, dietary changes may have the potential to reduce water used in food production. At the same time, it is well established that American diets need to change in order to align with Federal healthy eating guidelines. In this article, we examine if there are synergies between healthier diets and blue water conservation in the U.S. food system. We estimate blue water use by supply chain stage using a multi-regional environmental input-output model. Then, we link this blue water to individual food items and use mathematical optimization to model healthy diet scenarios that meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. We find that while healthier U.S. diet outcomes and blue water conservation can be synergistic, these goals may also be competing. Making minimal changes from current American consumption to a healthy omnivore or vegetarian diet, blue water use increases by 16%, but the omnivore and vegetarian diets reduce embodied blue water by 63 and 66%, respectively, when the objective is to minimize water use.

This article identifies through modeling the optimal locations of regional fresh produce facilities across the U.S. In contrast to much of the literature, we introduce establishment-level economies of scale to assess their impact on optimal solutions of facility locations, numbers and sizes. The facility location problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming model with the objective of minimizing total costs associated with fresh produce assembly, distribution facility operation. Our results suggest that the effect of scale economies is significant when large capacity facilities enjoy a comparative cost advantage. This article provides a replicable empirical framework to conduct impact and cost assessments for building and locating regional and local food system infrastructure. In addition, a number of future modeling scenarios are suggested.

The market basket chosen for the Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast (EFSNE) project was one of its major tools, as its contents served as the subject of a variety of analyses across the research teams. The interdisciplinary systems project studied multiple components of food systems in the Northeast region. One of the team members’ first collaborative exercises was the choice of the eight items representing the major food groups, includ­ing different processed forms of food and healthier versions of several. This article summarizes the information gathered on the market basket items, including (1) some salient data describing the state of each food item’s industry; (2) the current regional-self-reliance production level; (3) consu­mer purchases of these items in the Northeast utilizing secondary data sources and data gathered in project intercept surveys; (4) store inventories, including prices and where the food is produced or manufactured; (5) the percentage of the market basket food that is produced regionally, as well as the regional economic value-added percentage; (6) models of six of the foods predicting the effect on production and supply chains of changes in the system, such as increased demand and environ­mental changes; and (7) foodprints for each food. Market baskets are frequently used instruments in food environment and cost studies. Using market baskets in EFSNE allowed the teams to aggregate and interconnect data from multiple analyses done by researchers from multiple disciplines to tell a rich story about a specific set of foods, their supply chains, and the future opportunities to enhance their production and distribution in the region.

The food system accounts for a large share of fossil fuel consumption in the United States, and energy accounts for a substantial and highly variable share of food costs. This intersection between food and energy markets suggests that public and private decisions affecting one market will have spillover effects in the other. For example, would increasing the share of population having diets that align with Federal dietary guidance reduce fossil fuel use in the U.S. food system? Would a carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) tax improve diet quality? To address these issues, we use the most recent data available to integrate the material-flows accounting framework adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission into the existing food-system accounting structure of the ERS Food Dollar accounts. Then, we use mathematical optimization to model healthy diets. Our research indicates that U.S. agri-food industries are more sensitive to energy price changes than nonfood industries. We find that in 2007, fossil fuels linked to U.S. food consumption produced 13.6 percent of all fossil fuel CO 2 emissions economywide. Our study of alternative diets shows there are many ways to meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. If Americans made a minimal dietary shift to eat healthy, we find food-system energy use would decrease by 3 percent. By making greater changes from current consumption, we find food- system energy use could be reduced by as much as 74 percent. A tax on CO 2 emissions from fossil fuels would increase the cost of a typical meal by an average of 1.7 percent, with estimates ranging between 0.2 and 5.4 percent. ----- Errata: On March 8, 2017, ERS corrected a few errors made in the calculation of data reported in Figure 14 (p. 32) and in the calories columns in Table 5 (p. 34). References to these data were updated in the text on pages 31- 33 and p. 42. Also, a superscript on q on p. 89 was changed from a 1 to 0.