Description: This chart shows in current (2000) dollar terms cash receipts in the United States for livestock and livestock products and for crops for the period of 1949 to 2001. Cash receipts for all agricultural commodities is the sum of these two commodity groups. Similar to the trend in Wisconsin's cash receipts for agricultural products, cash receipts increased substantially in the early 1970s. Peaking in 1973 at 336 billion dollars (expressed in current dollars), cash receipts for agriculture have been steadily declining since 1979. Today, the current value of cash receipts is slightly less than cash receipts in 1949. In other words, real farm commodity prices (expressed in current dollars) are now less than what they were 50 years ago.

Source: ERS/USDA data, various years. Data can be found at http://www.ers.usda.gov