April 1, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 7)
Rating:
Strong Points: Data sets
Weak Points: Yawn
Summary:
ERS is an acronym for the Economic Research Services of the USDA and on the group’s informative Web pages, one can glean a considerable amount of information. For example, a click on Rural American at a Glance presents information about rural education, transportation, and poverty. A click on Agricultural Baseline Projections gives a 10-year economic projection of food and agriculture. More relevant for biotechnologists, a considerable amount of information about agricultural patents is available. For example, one can see that the number of agricultural biotechnology patents has been in a strong upward spiral since 1976. Breakdown of patent information by organism, technology, etc., helps one to understand the playing field quite well. A site for nerds among nerds.
