USDA’s long-term agricultural projections are a departmental consensus on a long-run representative scenario for the agricultural sector for the next decade. The projections are based on specific assumptions about macroeconomic conditions, policy, weather, and international developments, with no domestic or external shocks to global agricultural markets. A complete report is issued every year in February.
Projections cover agricultural commodities, agricultural trade, and aggregate indicators of the sector, such as farm income. The projections identify major forces and uncertainties affecting future agricultural markets; prospects for long-term global economic growth, agricultural production, consumption, and trade; and U.S. exports of major farm commodities and future price movements. The projections can also be used to analyze impacts of alternative policy scenarios.
The World Agricultural Outlook Board chairs an Interagency Agricultural Projections Committee that develops the projections. Other agencies involved with the long-term projections analysis and review include the Economic Research Service; the Farm Service Agency; 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 Economic Research Service has the lead role in preparing the USDA long-term projections report.
The USDA will release the complete USDA Agricultural Projections to 2028 report in February 2019. The complete report will include, in addition to the tables below, a full discussion of the commodity supply and use projections and projections for farm income and global commodity trade.
The Agricultural Act of 2014 is assumed to be extended and remain in effect through the projection period. The projections, which were prepared during August through October 2018, reflect a composite of model results and judgment-based analyses.
The projections use as a starting point the short-term forecasts from the October 11, 2018 World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report.
U.S. macroeconomic assumptions
Global real GDP growth assumptions
Population growth assumptions
Acreage for major U.S. field crops and Conservation Reserve Program assumptions
U.S. feed grains
U.S. wheat
U.S. rice
U.S. soybeans and products
U.S. upland cotton
U.S. sugar1
U.S. livestock
U.S. dairy
This report, the most recent, was released on February 15, 2018.
PDF
Microsoft Word
Excel (Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University)
Projections Database
Background on USDA's long-term projections and past issues of the report are available at the ERS Web site.
Contact Erik O’Donoghue (eodonoghue@ers.usda.gov), James Hansen (jhansen@ers.usda.gov), or David Stallings (dstallings@oce.usda.gov) for further information.
1The table containing data on U.S. sugar long-term projections was reposted to correct the figure on imports from Mexico in 2018/19 to 842,000 short tons, raw value, which led to other changes in sugar supply and use estimates.
