PURPOSE OF STUDY


 One purpose of this study is to bring up to date a history of
 Florida agricultural prices and to relate those prices to prices paid
 by farmers and to certain other farm costs. A further purpose is to
 show the relationship of Florida farm prices to United States farm
 prices received and paid and to wholesale prices of all commodities
 in the United States over time.
 A third, and important purpose, is to present index numbers of all
 farm product prices and selected groups of prices. They have been pre-
 pared to measure price changes in Florida farm products by expressing
 prices as percentage of a given base price.1 The period of time covered
 by the given base price is comparable to that used by the United States
 Department of Agriculture in order to make comparisons with United
 States prices as reliable and convenient as possible.


 SOURCE OF DATA


 All prices, quantities sold, and production data used in developing
 the index numbers and other information reported here are from the
 official records of the United States Department of Agriculture. The
 prices reported are fifteenth-of-the-month farm prices for all commodities
 except wholesale milk, commercial broilers, citrus, and vegetable crops.
 Wholesale milk prices are monthly weighted averages of milk eligible for
 fluid market sold to plants including surplus diverted to manufacturing.
 Broiler prices are monthly averages for commercial sales to processors.
 Citrus prices represent the monthly weighted average equivalent packing-
 house-door return per box for all methods of sale, whether packed or sold
 on-tree or sold for processing. Prices for vegetable crops are monthly
weighted average f.o.b. prices. Major sources of data are shown in the
Bibliography.







 See Appendix A for method of construction.