Every number on this site, and where it came from.

United States public agricultural research and development peaked at $7.64 billion in 2002 and had fallen to $5.16 billion by 2019, about a third lower in real terms.

Figures in constant 2019 dollars, covering USDA laboratories, land grant universities and cooperating institutions. Public R&D investment is the primary driver of long term agricultural productivity growth.

China overtook the United States as the largest public funder of agricultural research in 2011 and by 2015 was spending roughly twice as much.

China was spending more than $10 billion a year on agricultural research and development by 2015, close to five times its own spending in 2000.

Public agricultural research has returned about $20 to the United States economy for every $1 spent since 1900.

More than four out of five estimated rates of return fall between 20 and 60 percent, with a median estimate of 45 percent. Benefits reach the farm sector, the food industry and consumers.

The United States ran an agricultural trade surplus for nearly sixty years until 2019. It now runs a deficit, which reached about $49 billion in 2025.

Agricultural exports grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3 percent between 2015 and 2025 while imports grew at 5.8 percent. USDA projected a deficit of $41.5 billion for fiscal 2026, still above the $32 billion recorded in fiscal 2024.

The average age of a United States farm producer is 58.1 years, and has risen in every census since 2002.

There are four times as many producers aged 65 and over as there are under 35. Producers younger than 45 represented 22 percent of the total in 2022, up from 20 percent in 2017.

The Department of Labor certified approximately 363,000 H-2A seasonal farm worker positions in fiscal year 2024.

Foreign born workers represent roughly two thirds of the hired farm labor force, with undocumented workers accounting for around 40 percent of hired crop laborers.

The San Francisco Bay Area took 41.3 percent of all United States startup capital raised in 2025.

More than the next seven largest venture markets combined. New York took 14 percent, Los Angeles 8.3 percent and Boston 6.6 percent over the same year.

Ten micropolitan areas accounted for 57 percent of the $851 million in average annual private capital reaching micropolitan America between 2021 and 2023.

Of 178 micropolitan areas that raised capital through Regulation D across the period, concentration within rural America mirrors the national pattern.

Five metropolitan areas captured more than 90 percent of the nation's innovation sector growth between 2005 and 2017, while the bottom 90 percent of metros lost share.

The authors' proposed remedy is to concentrate federal innovation inputs in a small number of places that already hold research capacity, a science and engineering talent base, and room to grow.

Research Triangle Park produces $25.1 billion in annual economic impact, equal to 4.1 percent of North Carolina's gross domestic product.

Nearly 400 companies and more than 55,000 employees across 7,000 acres. In 2026 companies and landowners approved a framework permitting mixed use development for the first time in the park's history.

North Carolina ranked 47th of 48 states in per capita income in the 1950s.

The state economy ran on tobacco, textiles and furniture, and university graduates left the state to find work. The Raleigh and Durham region has since grown past 2.2 million residents.