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Food Demand Survey - Two Years

It's a bit hard to believe, but we've now been running the monthly Food Demand Survey (FooDS) for two years!  We've put together a summary of the results over the last year.

Overall, meat demand (as measured by willingness-to-pay) has remained strong and has increased over the last year.  Expectations of price increases for meat are higher than last year, but have trended downward in recent months.  We've learned a lot of interesting things from the various ad-hoc questions, which you can find in the monthly releases.

Here are a few charts summarizing our findings over the last year or two.

Are Calorie Counts Misleading?

The folks at Scientific American think so.  They want to focus on net-caloric impacts because (among other factors) some foods (and some cooking methods produce foods) that require fewer calories to digest than others.

Farm size and community prosperity

Darby Minnow Smith in an article for Grist writes:

“As the total number of farms goes down, the number of big* farms is going up — and this shift hurts rural America. According to an analysis by Food and Water Watch: “Communities with more medium- and smaller-sized farms have more shared prosperity, including higher incomes, lower unemployment, and lower income inequality, than communities with larger farms tied to often-distant agribusinesses.””

I didn't find a lot in the report by Food and Water Watch that would seriously substantiate a causation between increasing the number of small farms and higher income for a community.  What I did find there was a lot of correlational analysis and, in a few spots, some cherry picking of dates to make the argument more convincing.  

First, the article is correct that there is a long-term trend toward fewer, larger farms.  The cause isn't corporatization or greed or any of these factors, but rather increased technological progress that substitutes capital for labor and increases the returns to size.  The driving force on the other side of the supply chain are we consumers who relentlessly demand lower prices, higher quality, and more consistency.

When discussing the book Meat Racket, I previously listed a bunch of research on effects of vertical integration and concentration in animal agriculture (which is the focus of much of the above report). This review of the research by Michael Wohlgenant, for example, concludes:

“Studies on market power in meatpacking indicate that concentration in procurement of livestock (cattle or hogs) has not adversely affected prices received by producers or prices paid by consumers.”

Indeed, as I showed in this article in Animal Frontiers, the long run trend is much more output (due to technology gains) resulting in lower prices for consumers.  

So, what of the argument that communities with more small farms are financially better off than communities with more large farms?  That statistic may be true (or may not; I'm not sure what a representative look at the data would say).  But, even if so, I doesn't necessarily imply causation: that more small farms would increase the economic prosperity of a community.  Rather, I suspect the causation is the other way around.  

Most of the farms in this country are small farms, and you can be defined as a farm if you have just $1,000 is gross sales.  Most of these small farms/farmers aren't making a living from farming and they account for a very small share of the value of agricultural output.  The USDA classifies some of these as "residential" or "lifestyle" farms.  I suspect the more likely direction of causation is that people living in communities that happen to growing for some other reason  can afford to take on a "hobby farm."  That is, my guess is that economically growing communities spur growth in small farms, not the other way around.  

Moreover, if you look at work by my colleagues Brian Whitacre and Trey Malone, what you'll see in their graphs is that farmers markets and CSAs are largely an urban phenomenon.  They write: 

“Generally, in counties where high percentages of Community Supported Agriculture or direct-to-human consumption exist, residents have higher incomes and population density is also high. In other words, the farms that enjoy high levels of support from their local populations are not typically located in more rural parts of the country.”

This leads me to believe that  urban areas experiencing economic growth for reasons beyond agriculture are one of the key causes of more small farms.   So, again, it's not the small farms causing economic growth and vitality, it's the economic growth and vitality enabling small farming.  

Food Demand Survey (FooDS) - April 2015

The April 2015 edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) is now out.  

Compared to last month, April witnessed reduction in willingness-to-pay for pork products and an increase in willingness-to-pay chicken products and for beef steak.  There was a 4% increase in stated expenditures on food away from home.

There was a spike in stated awareness of and concern for bird flu, an issue that has been much in the news in past weeks.  There was a fall in awareness of and concern for GMOs in April compared to March.

We added three ad hoc questions in response to suggestions by followers of FooDS.  The first two questions dealt with knowledge and concern regarding Bisphenol A (BPA).

We first asked, “Which of the following is true about Bisphenol A (BPA)?”

Overall, respondent's didn't seem to know much about BPA.  For each item, the majority of respondents answered “I don’t know”. The most believed statement (a factually true statement), with 34.8% of respondents answering “true”, is that BPA is used to make plastics. The least believed statement (a factually false statement), with 19.15% of respondents answering “false”, is that BPA is a fertilizer. 

Then, on the next page, we asked, "Relative to the other issues we previously asked about, how concerned are you that BPA poses a health hazard in the food you eat?” The modal response, with 37.64% of respondents, was “neither unconcerned or concerned” that BPA would pose a health threat. 39% stated they were either somewhat or very concerned. The average level of concern on a five-point scale was 3.19, which would place BPA concern below concerns over E. Coli, Salmonella, Hormones, Farm Animal Welfare, Antibiotics, and GMOs but above concerns over Bird Flu, Mad cow, Swine Flu, Pink Slime, and Greenhouse Gases.

Finally, the last ad hoc question shifted gears and asked respondents to indicate their beliefs about McDonald's vs. Chipotle.   We asked, “Which of the following companies do you think best fits each of the following descriptions?”

Over half of the respondents stated that McDonald's is more profitable, more convenient, and
more affordable. 61% of respondents stated that Chipotle is higher in quality and 58.42% stated they sell fresher food. Approximately one third of participants responded saying they did not know who was more socially responsible, Chipotle or McDonalds.