Actions for Dairy (Fluid Milk and Cream) from the Food Availability database shown in Percent Date Type: Year; Country: USA; Commodity: Fluid milk: Butterfat content, percent; Attribute: Lower fat and skim milk-Buttermilk-Percent Sage Data. Sage Publishing Ltd Sage Data [electronic resource]

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Dairy (Fluid Milk and Cream) from the Food Availability database shown in Percent Date Type: Year; Country: USA; Commodity: Fluid milk: Butterfat content, percent; Attribute: Lower fat and skim milk-Buttermilk-Percent Sage Data. Sage Publishing Ltd Sage Data [electronic resource]

Corporate Author
United States Department of Agriculture
Published
Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications, Inc. 2025
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Summary
Milk's various components are transformed into a tremendous variety of dairy products�basics, such as butter, cheese, and yogurt, and some newer products, such as condensed milk and dry milks. Dairy products are consumed directly but are also used as ingredients in a vast number of foods. Analyzing the supply and demand conditions for farm milk requires some way of adding dairy products together. Aggregation method To avoid confusion, ERS aggregates dairy products on a common basis, by choosing a particular component (or a cluster of related components) of milk and adding products based on the level of that component in the product. Any component could work, but milkfat, skim solids or protein, and calcium are the most common bases. Milkfat has traditionally been most commonly used because it is the most valuable component and the least likely to be wasted or fed to animals. The concept of milk equivalent was derived because a quantity of milk is easier to grasp for most people than a quantity of a component. More accurately, a milk equivalent, or the milkfat basis of a product, is the farm milk required to provide the milkfat in that product. The simplest way to obtain a factor to convert product weight into a milk equivalent is to divide the fat percentage of the product by the fat percentage of farm milk. For example, a fat content of 27.5 percent in Swiss cheese and 3.67 percent in farm milk generates a factor of 7.49. In practice, many of the conversion factors were derived by more intricate, but conceptually close, procedures. No single aggregation of products is likely to be satisfactory, at least in the short run. Changes in milkfat-based product markets (like butter) can be quite different from changes in skim-based product markets (for example, nonfat dry milk). For this reason, total dairy product availability is best understood if simultaneously measured by a milkfat basis and a skim-solid basis. Avoiding double counting For dairy products, the total is generally less than the sum of the parts. Dairy products commonly are used as ingredients in the production of other dairy products. For example, ice cream might contain fresh milk and cream, condensed and dry milk, buttermilk, whey, and butter. Unless extraordinary measures are taken to adjust for duplication, adding availability of individual dairy products into total dairy availability results in double counting. An easier and more robust approach is to calculate aggregate availability similarly to individual product availability (see All dairy products: Per capita availability). Stocks, trade, and the other factors needed for the calculation are first aggregated into totals that are free of duplication (because the components can only be in one product at a time), and then total availability is calculated. USDA's NASS estimates milk production and stocks; the Census Bureau reports imports, exports, and shipments to U.S. territories. Sales of fluid milk, cream, and specialty products Data for sales of fluid milk, cream, and specialty products are compiled from Federal and State regulatory sources and estimates of the very minor amounts of unregulated milk (see Fluid milk and cream: Per capita availability). For beverage milks, the data represent quantities sold by fluid processors net of any returns from retailers. At one time, returns were quite significant, but improved raw milk quality, better pasteurization, and improved distribution have reduced the amount substantially. Beginning in 2000, availability data for fluid creams and specialty fluid items changed from a net sales basis to a production basis. The food availability data compiled by the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) reflect the amount of food available for human consumption in the United States. The dataset includes estimates for over 200 commodities, including individual fruits, vegetables, grains, added sugars and sweeteners, dairy products, nuts, meat, poultry, and seafood. ERS's food availability data are often referred to as food disappearance data because the data represent the resulting food supply after food "disappears" into the food marketing system. ERS calculates the residual of a commodity's total annual available supply after subtracting measurable uses, such as farm inputs (feed and seed), exports, ending stocks, and industrial uses. The annual data series includes per capita food availability estimates, which are useful for studying food consumption trends because they are a proxy for actual food intake. Food availability data measure the use of basic commodities, such as wheat, beef, and shell eggs for food products at the farm level or an early stage of processing. They do not measure food use of highly processed foods (such as bakery products, frozen dinners, and soups) in their finished form. Ingredients of highly processed foods, however, are included as components of less processed foods, such as sugar, flour, fresh vegetables, and fresh meat. The food availability series is based on records of annual commodity flows from production to end uses. This involves the development of supply and disappearance balance sheets for each major commodity from which human foods are produced. In general, the total annual available supply of each commodity consists of the sum of production, imports, and beginning stocks. These three components are either directly measured or estimated by government agencies using sampling and statistical methods. For most commodity categories, measurable nonfood uses are farm inputs (feed and seed), exports, ending stocks, and industrial uses. The amount of food available for human consumption is calculated as the difference between available commodity supplies and nonfood use. In a few cases, supplies for human food use are measured directly and one of the other use components becomes the residual. Per capita food availability is calculated by dividing the annual total food supply during a specific time period by the U.S. total resident population plus Armed Forces overseas in a given year. Yearly population estimates are from the U.S. Census Bureau. For commodities not shipped overseas in substantial amounts, such as fluid milk and cream, ERS uses the resident population as the base. No adjustments are made for changes in the demographic makeup of the population.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9781544332048 Sage Data CORE
Type of File/Data
Statistical data with bibliographic citation and abstract.
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