Data and Research to Improve the U.S. Food Availability System and Estimates of Food Loss: A Workshop Summary. Held in Washington, DC on April 8-9, 2014.

摘要

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service’s (ERS) Food Availability Data System (FADS) produces three distinct but related data series on food and nutrient availability for consumption: food availability data, loss-adjusted food availability data, and nutrient availability. The data serve as popular proxies for actual consumption at the national level for more than 200 commodities (e.g., fresh spinach, beef, and eggs). The core Food Availability (FA) data series provides data on the amount of food available, per capita, for human consumption in the United States with data back to 1909 for many commodities. FADS uses a food balance approach that relies on available data on annual supply of a commodity (e.g., sum of beginning stocks, production, and imports) in a specific year and subtracts known non-U.S. and nonfood uses of the product in that year (exports, farm and industrial uses, and ending stocks) to get an estimate of the amount of the commodity available for consumption, called domestic availability. The FA data are often referred to as food disappearance data because the data represent the amount of the food supply that “disappears” from farms, net imports, and storage facilities into the food marketing system and is available for consumption in the United States during a year. The FA data series provides annual total and per capita food availability estimates, which are useful for studying food consumption trends.