Thirty-six food and ag groups just released the annual Feeding the Economy Report, a farm-to-table study of the ag supply chain.
It shows that agriculture contributes nearly $10 trillion dollars to the overall economy, but one of the sponsors says that the ag economy is showing signs of stress.
According to John Bode, the President and CEO of the Corn Refiners Association, “That’s $9.5 trillion in total output, so that’s important and it shows an increase of 25% since the pandemic. So, ag is resilient. It’s big, but we are experiencing real stress, and that’s why, over the last year, we declined by $100 billion in output and the overall economy has grown during that time. So, in the past year, our contributions to the overall economy have declined from 20% to 18.7%.”
The report also provided insight on the current conditions surrounding ag manufacturing jobs.
“Ag manufacturing jobs are really important. We have almost as many Americans working in manufacturing that is agriculture-related as in farming, and that is twice as many people working in chemical manufacturing and four times as many people as in automobile manufacturing. So, those 2.28 million jobs in ag manufacturing are big in our economy, and they’re important. But let’s also recognize we have lost 30,000 jobs in ag manufacturing since the pandemic and that is a problem,” he adds.
The report shows that more than 47 million Americans have jobs that are either directly or indirectly related to food and agriculture.