USDA Releases Updated Economic Impact Report on Bio-Economy

Image courtesy of USDA.

Recently, the USDA Rural Development (RD) released “An Economic Impact Analysis of the U.S. Biobased Products Industry: 2023 Update," which demonstrates how the bio-based products industry grew at the national level despite the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The report release also honors this year’s National Bio-Based Products Day, an annual celebration on March 8th designed to raise awareness of bio-based products, their benefits and contributions to the U.S. economy.

Top-line report findings include:

Bio-based products, a segment of the bio-economy, contributed $489 billion to the U.S. economy in 2021, up from $464 billion in 2020. This is an increase of $25 billion or a 5.1% increase.
Employment decreased slightly from 4.05 million jobs in 2020 to 3.94 million jobs in 2021, with each job supporting an estimated 1.4 more jobs in other sectors of the U.S. economy. This decrease is likely due in part to challenges in the labor market upon restarting the economy in 2021.
The bio-based products sector and the jobs it supports are shown to impact every state in the nation and are not confined to states where agriculture is the main industry.
The use of bio-based products reduces the consumption of petroleum equivalents. In 2017, oil displacement was estimated to be as much as 9.4 million barrels of oil equivalents. In 2021, the displacement grew to 10.7 million barrels of oil equivalents using an 80% petroleum reduction value for bio-based products.

About the Report

Commissioned by USDA's BioPreferred® Program, which is administered by RD, the report’s findings span seven major sectors representing the bio-economy. Each report seeks to address seven important aspects of the bio-economy’s contributions:

The quantity of bio-based products sold
The value of the bio-based products
The quantity of jobs contributed
The quantity of petroleum displaced
Other environmental benefits
The economic impacts of bio-based exports
Areas in which the use or manufacturing of bio-based products could be more effectively used, including identifying any technical and economic obstacles and recommending how those obstacles can be overcome.

This year’s release is the sixth volume in a series of reports tracking the impact of the biobased product industry on the U.S. economy. The report’s conclusions and recommendations are those of the authors and have not been endorsed by the USDA.