The Economic Research Service (ERS) is a component of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a principal agency of the Federal Statistical System of the United States. It provides information and research on agriculture and economics.

History

The first USDA agency formally tasked with data collection was the Division of Statistics, created in 1863, one year after the USDA itself was created. By 1902, a Division of Foreign Markets had been created, and the following year, that division was merged with the Division of Statistics to form the Bureau of Statistics. In its initial years the BAE recruited agricultural economists from the handful of land-grant universities that offered the Ph.D in agriculture, such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Cornell.

The ERS was established by Secretary of Agriculture Memorandum 1446, supp. 1, of April 3, 1961. It was subsequently consolidated with other USDA units (including the Economic Development Service, established in 1969, and the Economic Management Support Center, established 1974) into the Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service by Secretary's Memorandum 1927, effective December 23, 1977. In 2018, the office of Trump's Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue, also issued a directive to ERS and other research components of USDA, ordering them to include a disclaimer on peer-reviewed research in scientific journals stating that findings and conclusions were "preliminary" and "should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy." Susan Offutt, the ERS administrator under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said that the requirement was contrary to the USDA's longstanding policy that permitted and encouraged federal scientists to publish work in journals, In May 2019, following an outcry, the USDA rescinded the directive. The move to Kansas City area resulted in an attrition rate particularly high in the Resource and Rural Economics Division (90%) and in the Food Economics Division (up to 89%).

Functions

Today, ERS's mission is to provide "economic research and information to inform public and private decision making on economic and policy issues related to agriculture, food, natural resources, and rural America."

The ERS and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) jointly fund and manage the Agricultural Resource Management Survey, a multi-phase, nationally representative survey of U.S. farms that is the USDA's "primary source of information on the financial condition, production practices, and resource use of America's farm businesses and the economic well-being of America's farm households." The publication began in February 2003; it replaced Agricultural Outlook, FoodReview, and Rural America. that (along with NASS) reported to the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics. This restructuring prompted criticism that the ERS's historically independent and autonomous data-collection mission would be compromised by political interference. Each division is led by a director. In 2019, in the wake of a relocation order, ERS employees voted overwhelmingly to unionize under the American Federation of Government Employees, forming their own bargaining unit.

Administrators

The following individuals served as the administrators of the ERS from 1961 to the present:

  1. 1961–1965: Nathan M. Koffsky
  2. 1965–1972: Melvin L. Upchurch
  3. 1972–1977: Quentin M. West
  4. 1977–1981: Kenneth R. Farrell (ESCS Administrator); J.B. Penn (Associate Administrator for Economics)
  5. 1982–1993: John E. Lee
  6. 1993–1996: Acting administrators
  7. 1996–2006: Susan Offutt
  8. 2007–2011: Kitty Smith
  9. 2011–2018: Mary Bohman
  10. 2018–2020: Acting administrators
  11. 2020–2025: Spiro Stefanou
  12. 2025-present: Kelly Maguire

See also

  • Agricultural extension
  • Agricultural Research Service
  • Economics of global warming
  • Economics of climate change mitigation
  • Henry Cantwell Wallace
  • World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates

Notes

  • Economic Research Service in the Federal Register