Measuring the Supply and Utilization of Farm Commodities: New Indexes, 1924-54

Excerpt from the report Foreword: During the last 30 years, supplies of farm commodities have changed substantially. These changes reflect trends in production, in stocks, and in imports. Significant changes have occurred in utilization, also. These have resulted from trends in domestic civilian consumption, in consumption by the Armed Forces, in exports, and in amounts used for feed and for other purposes. Research economists have long, wanted a broad statistical measure of these changes in the supply and utilization of farm commodities. We hope that the material given here will provide much of the necessary information. The index of supply-utilization of all farm commodities presented in this report includes a master index and coordinated subindexes. These indexes measure the flow of farm commodities from our farms and from overseas, and out of stocks into use as food or for nonfood purposes in the United States, for civilians and the Armed Forces, into export channels, or back into stocks. Because all components have been worked up in terms of equivalent farm values in constant dollars, these indexes provide the necessary information for simultaneous cross section and time series analyses. The framework of the indexes provide for much flexibility because the value aggregates, given in the appendix, can be shifted around to meet the needs of particular analyses.