Agricultural News
This Month's Report Marks Fourth Anniversary of FooDS Survey, See What the Data Reveals
Fri, 21 Apr 2017 17:06:07 CDT
On Friday, Dr. Jayson Lusk of OSU released the results of the April 2017 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS). Compared to one month ago, willingness-to-pay (WTP) decreased for all meat products except deli ham. WTP for pork chops reached the lowest point in the almost four-year history of FooDS. WTPs for all meat products are lower than one year ago, except for hamburger.
Expenditures on food eaten at home fell 2.08% from March to April and expenditures on food purchased away from home increased 2.81%. Consumers expect a slight decrease in beef, chicken, and pork prices compared to one month ago. Consumers plan to buy more chicken, beef, and pork compared to last month. Plans to eat out decreased slightly compared to last month.
Several new ad hoc questions were added to this month's survey.
Participants were first asked: "Do you think hydroponic vegetables should be allowed, under certain conditions, to be labeled organic?"
Secondly, participants were given a set of six questions derived by the USDA Economic Research Service to determine food security status.
Finally, we were interested in whether people actively sought to avoid information they may find undesirable.
In response to these questions, about 46 percent of participants stated "yes", hydroponic vegetables should be labeled organic, 24% said "no", and the remaining 29% said "I don't know".
About 24 percent of participants were found to have very low food security. About 23 percent of respondents were found to have both high or marginal food security or low food security.
The mean house hold income for those who are not food insecure is $86,000 versus those who do face food insecurity with a mean household income in the low $60,000 range. And about 17 percent of individuals who face a very low food security level currently farm or ranch for a living.
And regarding the final question, overall, the results suggest just about half the respondents preferred not to know information they find disagreeable or unappealing.
For a chance to review the complete survey for April 2017, click here. Also, this report marks the fourth anniversary of the survey. So, for a chance to review the data from this year and the previous three, click here to check out this comparison on Dr. Lusk's blog.
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