US Ag Price Index

Gro developed two agricultural price indices for the United States. One tracks the US food manufacturing producer price index, providing food and beverage companies insight into their cost base inflation, including energy prices, which are required for manufacturing food. The other is a consumption-weighted basket of prices, excluding commodities influenced by energy markets, that reflects what inflationary trends experienced by consumers. Both indices can be customized and weighted for Gro users based on their commodities of interest. 

Customers use this index to

• Understand food inflation in the US six weeks ahead of the US government’s reports
• Analyze which commodities are driving retail food inflation or food manufacturing companies’ cost inflation on a month-to-month basis
• Build a custom-weighted index to analyze how a basket of goods central to a company’s core business is affected by inflation
• Use price indices to predict revenues or costs in real time

Why It Matters

Understanding food inflation is especially important because food accounts for a large share of total household expenditures. The US Ag Price Indices put together a basket of national average prices for important food commodities. It includes high-frequency local cash price data and is modeled based on consumer spending on foods such as grains, vegetable oils, fresh produce, and proteins. Gro’s indices provide an inflation estimate for the current month. That is up to six weeks ahead of when official inflation data becomes available from governments, which typically release monthly inflation reports in the subsequent month. 

The rapid spread of COVID-19 led to unprecedented supply chain disruptions worldwide, as well as significant commodity price volatility. The pandemic first brought supply chain disruptions to China, and then the US. Gro’s Ag Price Indices provided real-time analysis for tracking how inflation is changing daily, ahead of the release of government indicators.

Methodology

Each index is built on the Gro Platform by combining hundreds of thousands of unique price series at the national, regional, and local levels (e.g., cities, processing facilities, grain elevators, and ports). We aggregate this price data using a basket that represents the food consumption expenditures within the economy.

Related Resources

Gro US Ag Price Index Display

US Food Prices Jump 20%, Gro Index Shows