USDA outlines 10-year agricultural baseline for U.S. farm sector and trade

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USDA 10-year agricultural baseline

Highlights

USDA's Agricultural Projections report, released every February, provides 10-year outlooks including farm income, specialty crops, and international trade projections.
ERS leads annual long-term agricultural projections following October WASDE; updated Agricultural Baseline Database adds new projection years for crops and livestock in November.
Annual baseline reports and visualizations serve as planning tools, outlining major market drivers, global trade flows, and price trends for producers and analysts.

Annual projection framework and release schedule

As reported by Economic Research Service, the baseline projections are prepared annually after the October release of USDA's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, or WASDE, and are published through several data and report products across the following months.

ERS economists help lead the long-term projections analysis and preparation of the USDA Agricultural Projections report. Other USDA participants include the World Agricultural Outlook Board, the Farm Programs and Conservation Business Center, the Foreign Agricultural Service, the Office of the Chief Economist, the Office of Budget and Program Analysis, the Risk Management Agency, the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The main USDA Agricultural Projections report is released in February each year and includes analysis tied to U.S. and macroeconomic projections issued in the previous November. It also includes data and analysis on farm income, specialty crops, aggregate U.S. trade and international trade projections over the next decade.

USDA also updates the Agricultural Baseline Database in early November, adding an additional projection year for major U.S. field crops including corn, sorghum, barley, oats, wheat, rice, sugar, soybeans and upland cotton, as well as livestock categories such as beef, pork, poultry and eggs, and dairy.

Market visibility and sector planning implications

The long-run outlook is intended to identify major forces and uncertainties shaping future agricultural markets, including prospects for global economic growth, consumption, trade, price trends and commodity trade flows. That makes the baseline a planning tool for producers, exporters, analysts and officials tracking structural changes in the farm economy.

Alongside the written report and database, USDA publishes visualization products for both U.S. and international baseline projections. The U.S. visualization is updated annually in November, while the international baseline data files and related visualization products are updated in February to provide supply, demand and trade projections for major agricultural commodities across selected countries and regions.

Our earlier coverage of USDA ERS data on the farm share of the food dollar highlighted that in 2024 farms received 11.8 cents of every dollar spent on domestically produced food, with the remainder absorbed by processing, marketing, transportation, and other supply-chain costs. The piece also pointed to the long-running nature of this split and its implications for farm income and consumer food-price dynamics, alongside a separate ERS note on the scale of the USDA School Breakfast Program.

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