ERS compares prices paid by consumers for food with prices received by farmers for corresponding commodities. This data set reports these comparisons for a variety of foods sold through retail foodstores such as supermarkets and supercenters.

Comparisons are made for individual foods and groupings of individual foods—market baskets—that represent what a typical U.S. household buys at retail in a year. The retail costs of these baskets are compared with the money received by farmers for a corresponding basket of agricultural commodities.

This data set is regularly updated in the Spring and then again in the Fall, as the underlying data become available.

ERS data on price spreads for meat, pork, poultry, and eggs can be found in the Meat Price Spreads data product. A different method is used to calculate monthly price spreads for beef, pork, broilers, turkeys, and eggs.

Users may also be interested in an interactive data visualization; see Interactive Chart: Price Spreads and Food Markets.