Being people who work with statistical data every day it was with great pleasure that we read recently that the USDA has decided to reverse its earlier decision to eliminate dozens of longstanding statistical reports that it has maintained for decades. Turns out the industries being covered by these reports find them extremely valuable, essential really. So, industry leaders explained just how important those reports are to their planning and financing and the USDA reconsidered. We find this development most encouraging. Some things really are best done at the large scale by an entity not motivated by its own commercial interests.

Today’s market size, selected from a long list of in-depth USDA commodity reports, is the market for domestic cantaloupe. It is the value (farm value or wholesale value) of cantaloupes harvested in in the United States in 2010 when 77,430 acres were planted with cantaloupe.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2010
Market size: $314.4 million
Source: William Neuman, “U.S. Reverses Decision To End Farming Reports,” The New York Times, December 24, 2011, page B3, available online here. The USDA report on cantaloupes can be found online here. The figure used here is from Table 3—U.S. Cantaloupe: Acreage, Yield, Production, and Value, 1950-2010.
Original source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Posted on December 30, 2011