USDA food price outlook intelligence (monthly)

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Monthly vintage history of USDA ERS CPI food-price forecasts (2002-present, 22 food categories): forecast intervals, vintage-to-vintage revisions, forecast errors vs realized annual changes, and a documented 0-100 food-inflation pressure score with regimes. Keyless ERS CSVs.

Source: USDA Economic Research Service
Rows: 9,240
Columns: 23
Source cadence: Monthly
Last refreshed: Sep 30, 2026
Theme: economy

Column	Type	Description
vintage_month	date	First day of the month the ERS forecast vintage was published. Join key with target_year and item. (unit: date)
target_year	integer	Calendar year the forecast covers. Join key with vintage_month and item. (unit: year)
price_index	string	Price index family. Always 'CPI' in v1 (PPI vintages excluded as stale — see connector docstring).
item	string	ERS CPI food category (22-item closed registry, e.g. 'All food', 'Eggs', 'Beef and veal'). Join key.
item_code	string	URL-safe short code for item.
country	string	Country name (shared normalization layer).
country_code	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (USA).
forecast_lower_pct	float	Lower bound of the ERS forecast interval for the target year's annual percent change. (unit: percent)
forecast_mid_pct	float	Midpoint of the ERS forecast interval (published midpoint; imputed as (lower+upper)/2 when absent — see mid_imputed_flag). (unit: percent)
forecast_upper_pct	float	Upper bound of the ERS forecast interval for the target year's annual percent change. (unit: percent)
forecast_width_pp	float	Forecast interval width (upper minus lower), the published uncertainty gauge. Null where ERS omitted a bound (e.g. the 2023-09 and 2024-09 vintages publish lower+midpoint only). (unit: percentage points)
mid_imputed_flag	boolean	True when forecast_mid_pct was imputed as (lower+upper)/2 because the vintage lacked the midpoint attribute.
vintage_seq_no	integer	1-based sequence number of this vintage among all vintages forecasting the same (target_year, item). (unit: rank)
revision_pp	float	Change in forecast_mid_pct vs the previous vintage for the same (target_year, item). Null for the first vintage of each target. (unit: percentage points)
revision_3m_pp	float	Change in forecast_mid_pct vs 3 vintages ago for the same (target_year, item). Null until 4 vintages exist. (unit: percentage points)
actual_pct	float	Realized annual percent change from the ERS annual file. Null for not-yet-observed target years. (unit: percent)
forecast_error_pp	float	actual_pct minus the final (December-of-target-year) vintage's forecast_mid_pct. Positive = ERS under-predicted. Null except on final vintages of observed years. (unit: percentage points)
abs_forecast_error_pp	float	Absolute forecast error. (unit: percentage points)
food_inflation_pressure_score	float	Documented 0-100 food-cost pressure gauge: 100 * (0.7 * level_component + 0.3 * width_component), where level_component = (clip(z,-3,3)+3)/6 with z = (mid - mean) / sd of the item's trailing-10-year actuals, and width_component min-maxes the interval width to the item's own width history (p5-p95). A relative history gauge, not a price forecast. Null when the width is unknown or fewer than 8 trailing actual years exist. (unit: 0-100 score)
pressure_regime	string	Fixed-cut regime from the pressure score: subdued (<20) / low (<40) / moderate (<60) / elevated (<80) / high (>=80). Null when the score is null.
row_hash	string	Deterministic 16-hex SHA-256 over (vintage_month, target_year, item_code, lower, mid, upper).
as_of	date	UTC date the snapshot was built. (unit: date)
source_url	string	Exact ERS CSV URL the vintage history was parsed from.

First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.

vintage_month	target_year	price_index	item	item_code	country	country_code	forecast_lower_pct	forecast_mid_pct	forecast_upper_pct	forecast_width_pp	mid_imputed_flag	vintage_seq_no	revision_pp	revision_3m_pp	actual_pct	forecast_error_pp	abs_forecast_error_pp	food_inflation_pressure_score	pressure_regime	row_hash	as_of	source_url
2002-07-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	-0.2	1.9	4.1	4.3	false	1	—	—	2.2	—	—	35.8	low	93f5934131eddd91	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2002-08-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	-0.2	1.8	4	4.2	false	2	-0.1	—	2.2	—	—	33	low	2edd5e12183bf909	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2002-09-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	-0.2	1.8	3.8	4	false	3	0	—	2.2	—	—	32.3	low	4306963fe1818f61	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2002-10-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	0	1.8	3.7	3.7	false	4	0	-0.1	2.2	—	—	31.2	low	57766ced8497b1c9	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2002-11-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	0.2	1.9	3.6	3.4	false	5	0.1	0.1	2.2	—	—	32.5	low	4dc4c13c3b9a24f9	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2002-12-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	0.3	1.9	3.5	3.2	false	6	0	0.1	2.2	—	—	31.8	low	7c13357483c3ec65	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2003-01-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	0.7	1.9	3.2	2.5	false	7	0	0.1	2.2	—	—	29.2	low	9a312bd77ba166c0	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2003-02-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	0.7	1.8	3	2.3	false	8	-0.1	-0.1	2.2	—	—	26.1	low	45db25ca10878f7f	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2003-03-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	1.1	2.1	3.1	2	false	9	0.3	0.2	2.2	—	—	32.2	low	4399178dc0000807	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv
2003-04-01	2,003	CPI	All food	all_food	United States	USA	1.2	2	2.9	1.7	false	10	-0.1	0.1	2.2	—	—	28.7	low	65e118550fb5f228	2026-09-30	https://www.ers.usda.gov/media/6464/historical-consumer-price-index-cpi-forecast-series.csv

Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).

cURL

curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/usda_food_price_outlook_intel/us_food_price_outlook_monthly" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'

Python

import requests

ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/usda_food_price_outlook_intel/us_food_price_outlook_monthly").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")

# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
    print(row)

API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/usda_food_price_outlook_intel/us_food_price_outlook_monthly

Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.

Cite this snapshot

Pinned to snapshot 20260930T004355Z-f886f6e145d0 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.

APA

USDA Economic Research Service. (2026). USDA food price outlook intelligence (monthly) [Data set, snapshot 20260930T004355Z-f886f6e145d0, sha256 f886f6e145d0]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-30, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/usda_food_price_outlook_intel/us_food_price_outlook_monthly?snapshot=20260930T004355Z-f886f6e145d0

BibTeX

@misc{dz_usda_food_price_outlook_intel_us_food_pr_f886f6e1,
  title        = {{USDA food price outlook intelligence (monthly)}},
  author       = {{USDA Economic Research Service}},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Datazimuts},
  howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/usda_food_price_outlook_intel/us_food_price_outlook_monthly?snapshot=20260930T004355Z-f886f6e145d0}},
  note         = {Snapshot 20260930T004355Z-f886f6e145d0, sha256 f886f6e145d0499eae186e70544bac8a23794e7abed57a82588969e582dd109e; accessed 2026-09-30}
}

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USDA food price outlook intelligence (monthly)

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