Farmer's Share of Consumer Food Dollar Is 11.8 Cents in 2024
Published: Friday, March 27, 2026
The following article from USDA's Economic Research Service provides select findings from the March 2026 Food Dollar update, which released the 2024 Food Dollar data and revised data for previous years. With this update, the Food Dollar model and underlying data sources were comprehensively revised.
The Food Dollar measures costs of food along the domestic food supply chain, attributing the shares of value to different sources along three bills that conceptualize the food supply chain in different ways. These bills are the marketing bill, the industry group bill and the primary factor bill.
The marketing bill divides consumer food spending into farm and marketing shares. The farm share measures the gross returns to farm establishments for the sale of farm commodities linked to consumer food spending.
The farm share was 11.8 cents per dollar spent by U.S. consumers on domestically produced food in 2024. The marketing share, which captures the share of value added by post-farm activities that transform farm commodities into finished food products, was 88.2 cents. This includes transporting, processing, storing, wholesaling and retailing food.
A key way the marketing bill changed in this update is that the Food Dollar's definition of food broadened to include bottled water and soft drinks as well as coffee, tea and beverage materials. The broader definition of food used in the new methodology reduces the farm share reported by the Food Dollar from 12.3 cents to 11.8 cents in 2024 and 12.5 cents to 12.1 cents for 2023. The farm share measures are lower as the as the supply chains for these newly included items use relatively few farm commodities.
In 2024, U.S. consumers spent $2.58 trillion on food, up 4% from $2.48 trillion in 2023. Total food spending consists of domestically produced food (i.e., food dollars) as well as imported food dollars. Spending on domestically produced food was $2.17 trillion in 2024, up 3% from $2.11 trillion in 2023.
Domestic farm establishments received $256.7 billion in 2024 from the sale of commodities used in the food system, up 1% or $2.7 billion from 2023 when it was $254.1 billion.
The farm share for all food items, which includes at-home and away-from-home spending, decreased .3 cents per food dollar from 12.1 cents in 2023 to 11.8 cents in 2024. Food spending shifted toward food away from home, increasing 4.2% to $1.27 trillion in 2024 whereas food-at-home spending increased 1.4% from 2023 to $901 billion.
Farmers receive a lower share of food-away-from-home spending as the food in that channel receives additional processing and transportation along the supply chain to the final point of sale. The food-at-home farm share increased to 18.5 cents per food dollar in 2024 from 18.4 cents in 2023, while the food-away-from-home farm share decreased to 7.1 cents per food dollar from 7.5 cents.
The Food Dollar separates food-at-home spending into 28 product accounts. The farm shares vary across accounts due to differences in supply chain structures and market factors. For example, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables will generally have higher farm shares as they involve minimal levels of food processing compared to other food types such as canned, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables. Of the 2024 food-at-home farm shares, 10 decreased, 11 increased and 7 were within a tenth of a cent of their 2023 values.
The industry group bill measures the value added by groups of industries engaged in similar production activities along the domestic food supply chain. Each industry group receives a share of consumer food spending in proportion to its value contribution to the domestic food supply chain, and the shares all sum to $1. In 2024, 38.6 cents per food dollar of value added was supplied by food services industry group, which includes full-service, limited-service, and other restaurants and eating places. The share increased 1.1 cents per food dollar from 2023, reflecting the continuing shift toward food-away-from home spending.
The contribution of industries to value added in the domestic supply chain varies across industry groups. The food services industry group added $836.8 billion in value to the domestic agri-food supply chain, a 5.9% increase from $790 billion in 2023, which was more than total annual food spending growth (3%). Value added by the livestock industry group increased by 12.1%, also more than total food spending.
Value added by forestry, fishing and agricultural services (2.4%), food processing (2.1%), and finance and insurance (1.3%) also increased—but by less than total food spending—leading to decreased shares of the food dollar. In contrast, the value added by crops (-10.5%), energy (-7.8%) and transportation (-1.5%) decreased between 2023 and 2024.
The industry group bill provides detail on farm production by separating the total value added by farms (6.7 cents per food dollar in 2024) into crops (2.5 cents); livestock (3.3 cents); and forestry, fishing, and agricultural services (.9 cents). These farm production shares of the food dollar are net of any input costs from other industry groups in the supply chain, such as agribusiness, transportation, and energy. These shares are then used to pay output taxes, farm labor, imported inputs and property income. That is, the shares exclude other nonfarm costs.
From the marketing bill, the gross return to farms (i.e., farm share) was 11.8 cents per food dollar, implying that farms purchased 5.1 cents (11.8 cent farm shares less 6.7 cents farm value added) of inputs per food dollar. Agribusiness, which represents all farm inputs not elsewhere classified into an industry group, was 3 cents, implying that all other industry groups collectively sold 2.1 cents of inputs to farms.
The primary factor bill divides a food dollar by source of value added (salaries and benefits, property income, and output taxes) as well as imported inputs for that food dollar's supply chain. In 2024, workers in the food system received $1.17 trillion for their labor, which was 54.1 cents per food dollar, up from $1.10 trillion (52 cents per food dollar) in 2023. Property income decreased in 2024, to $710 billion from $726 billion in 2023, and its share of the food dollar went from 34.5 cents to 32.7 cents. Output taxes decreased from 7.7 cents per food dollar in 2023 to 7.2 cents per food dollar in 2024.
The primary factor bill depends on factor usage at the industry level, as well as how much value added each industry group adds to the food system. For instance, one reason behind the changes in primary factors was the shift toward more food-away-from-home spending. Food-away-from-home uses 12 cents more labor (59.1 cents) per dollar of output than the food-at-home dollar (47.1 cents). Most of the value added in the food-away-from-home value chain comes from the foodservices industry group, which is very labor intensive (44.2 cents of labor out of 65.8 cents of foodservices per food-away-from-home dollar).
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