US agricultural exports, biodiesel included, were worth $177.2 billion in 2024 and supported a further $192 billion of activity in the wider economy, bringing their total contribution to US economic output to $369.2 billion, the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) said in a chart published on 29 September.

The extra activity comes from the services exports need on their way from the farm to the port: transport, storage, handling, packaging, marketing and finance. ERS measures those links with its Agricultural Trade Multipliers, which estimate how much output and how many jobs each export supports.

Bulk, unprocessed commodities such as grain, soybeans, cotton and raw tobacco earned $56.4 billion abroad and supported another $51.5 billion of domestic activity.

Nonbulk exports, products that are processed further or need special handling, such as soybean meal, ethanol, meat, almonds, fruit and vegetables, did more for the home economy. They were worth $120.8 billion in 2024 and supported an additional $140.5 billion of activity.

Taken together, each dollar of US agricultural exports supported $2.08 of total US economic activity in 2024. The chart, by ERS economists Wendy Zeng and Fengxia Dong, is drawn from the Agricultural Trade Multiplier release of June 2026.

Source: USDA Economic Research Service