USDA Cold Storage Report: How to Read the Data

Reviewed September 2026 against USDA NASS and the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIFIIR).

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The USDA Cold Storage Report is a monthly release from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) that lists how many million pounds of beef, pork, poultry, butter, cheese, and other refrigerated commodities sit in US warehouses. It is a separate, less-frequent survey — the Warehouse Capacity report — that measures how much refrigerated space exists in the first place: 3.99 billion cubic feet of gross capacity across 931 commercial refrigerated warehouses as of the 2025 survey, an 8% increase over 2023’s 3.70 billion cubic feet. Both reports come from the same agency, both are free, and both are usually the two things people mean when they type “usda cold storage report” into a search bar.

This page explains what each report actually contains, how to pull the current numbers yourself (NASS republishes monthly, so any figure printed here has a shelf life), and what the most recent data — February 2026 — shows for beef and pork.

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Two Different USDA Reports Share This Name

Searches for “usda cold storage report” and “usda cold storage data” tend to land on one of two distinct NASS publications, and conflating them is the most common source of confusion:

• Cold Storage report (monthly): Inventory volumes — million pounds of beef, pork, poultry, butter, cheese, and frozen fruit/vegetables held in warehouses, published roughly three weeks after each month ends.
• Warehouse Capacity report (biennial): Total refrigerated square footage/cubic footage available nationwide, published every odd-numbered year. The 2025 edition is the current one; the next is due in 2027.

If you searched “usda cold storage data” or “current usda cold food storage chart” wanting a snapshot of what’s stocked right now, you want the monthly report. If you searched wanting to know how much refrigerated warehouse space the country has, you want the capacity survey. The next two sections cover each in turn.

USDA Cold Storage Capacity: The 2025 Numbers

The 2025 Warehouse Capacity survey found 3.99 billion cubic feet of gross refrigerated storage capacity across 931 commercial refrigerated warehouses in the United States — a 7.8% increase over the 3.70 billion cubic feet recorded in the 2023 survey, according to USDA figures reported by the International Institute of Refrigeration. Of that gross figure, 82% is usable refrigerated space once you exclude docks, offices, and mechanical rooms.

Split by temperature band, the 2025 survey shows:

• Freezer space (-17.8°C / 0°F or lower): 72.4 million cubic metres
• Cooler space (0-10°C / 32-50°F): 19.7 million cubic metres

That freezer-to-cooler ratio — roughly 3.7 to 1 — tells you most of the country’s built refrigerated capacity is for long-hold frozen product (meat, French fries, ice cream) rather than short-hold chilled goods (fresh dairy, produce). If you searched “usda cold storage march 31 2021 french fries cheese pdf,” you’re likely looking for a specific historical monthly release archived on the NASS site under that publication date — NASS keeps a full archive of past Cold Storage PDFs by release date, searchable directly on their Cold Storage survey page, rather than through general search.

Note: Farmonaut’s iOS app brings satellite-based field and supply-chain monitoring to agricultural decision-makers who need data between official USDA release dates.

The Monthly Inventory Report: What’s in the Report Itself

The monthly Cold Storage report — the one most searches for “cold storage report” and “cold storage inventory” are actually after — is structured around a fixed set of commodity categories so that month-over-month and year-over-year comparisons stay consistent:

• Meat: Beef, pork, poultry (chicken and turkey), reported as total pounds in cold storage at month-end
• Dairy: Butter and cheese (natural and American-type), reported separately
• Produce: Frozen fruits and frozen vegetables, aggregated by major category

Each release states the end-of-month total for the current month, the prior month, and the same month a year earlier, so a reader can compute both the month-over-month and year-over-year change directly from the table without needing USDA to editorialize it. The brief for this article did not turn up a public national-level breakdown of storage share by product category (e.g., what percentage of total cold storage space is dairy versus meat) — NASS publishes pounds by commodity, not square footage by commodity, so that cross-tabulation isn’t published at the national level. If you need it for a specific warehouse or region, you’d have to request it from a commercial cold-storage operator or a state agricultural office directly.

On “usda report on fogging system” — that specific search doesn’t match anything in USDA’s Cold Storage or Warehouse Capacity survey series. Fogging/humidification systems for produce storage are covered by extension-service and refrigeration-engineering literature, not by NASS’s cold storage statistics program, so this article won’t stretch to cover it; if that’s what you were after, a produce-storage engineering resource is the better fit.

Reading the Latest Report: February 2026 Beef and Pork

The most recent Cold Storage report available at the time of writing — released for February 2026 — shows two commodities moving in opposite directions: beef cold storage inventory fell 3% month-over-month, while pork cold storage inventory rose 6% month-over-month, according to the USDA NASS February 2026 Cold Storage report (PDF).

Those are percentage changes against the prior month’s total, not absolute pounds — NASS’s release format states current inventory as a percent-change figure against 1) the prior month and 2) the same month last year, not as a standalone “X million pounds” headline in the summary text. To get the underlying pound figures behind that 3% and 6%, you pull them from the report’s data tables directly, or query NASS Quick Stats by commodity and month.

A 3% monthly draw on beef against a 6% monthly build on pork is the kind of divergence that matters more than either number alone — it can reflect different slaughter schedules, different export demand, or processors shifting freezer space between species. The report itself doesn’t explain why; it only states what moved. Explaining why requires pairing it with USDA’s separate slaughter and export data for the same period, which sits outside the Cold Storage report proper.

By the time you’re reading this, a newer monthly report has almost certainly replaced February 2026 as “the latest.” NASS typically posts each month’s Cold Storage report within about four weeks of month-end — check the release calendar on the NASS Cold Storage survey page for the exact next date, then pull the current PDF from there rather than relying on this or any other summary.

Where to Get the Current Report (Not Last Year’s)

Three concrete paths, depending on what you need:

1. The PDF release: Each month’s Cold Storage report is published as a standalone PDF on the NASS Cold Storage survey page, listed by release date. This is the fastest route if you just want to read the summary tables as USDA formatted them.
2. Quick Stats database: For a specific commodity and month — say, frozen cheese inventory for a particular quarter — query NASS’s Quick Stats database directly rather than reading through PDFs by hand. This is the right tool if you’re building a time series or comparing several months at once.
3. The Warehouse Capacity survey: For total refrigerated square/cubic footage rather than inventory, the biennial capacity survey (most recent: 2025, next: 2027) is a separate publication on the same NASS survey page.

A durable habit that outlasts any single month’s numbers: bookmark the NASS Cold Storage survey page itself, not a cached copy of one release. USDA’s own page is the only place guaranteed to carry the current edition the moment it posts.

Who Actually Uses This Data

• Grain and livestock producers use inventory trends to time sales against building or shrinking reserves in their commodity.
• Cold storage operators and processors use both the capacity survey (to benchmark their own footprint against the national 3.99 billion cubic feet) and the monthly inventory report (to plan turnover).
• Traders and exporters read month-over-month percentage shifts — like February 2026’s beef/pork divergence — as early signals ahead of price moves.
• Policymakers use national reserve levels to assess food security exposure during supply shocks.
• Retailers and food service buyers use category-level trends to negotiate contracts and anticipate price pressure.

Storage Costs: What Holding Inventory Actually Charges You

Cold storage inventory doesn’t sit for free, and neither does grain in a bin — the financing cost behind “why did inventory drop” is often as simple as interest. The University of Kentucky’s Agricultural Economics extension calculates that at a 10% interest rate, the operating-loan carrying cost of storing grain runs about $0.21 per bushel, a figure drawn from current lending-rate scenarios for the 2024-2026 period. That’s the interest component alone — it excludes physical storage fees, shrinkage, and insurance, which are separate line items on top of it.

Applied to cold storage specifically: every month a processor holds pork or beef instead of selling it carries a comparable financing cost, scaled to the commodity’s value and the prevailing rate. When pork inventory rose 6% in February 2026 while beef fell 3%, part of that decision math — for any operator with financed inventory — includes what the interest clock is costing them per unit per month. The calculator below runs that arithmetic for grain storage; the same logic (principal × rate ÷ 12 × months) applies to any financed inventory, cold storage included, once you swap in the right per-unit value.

Calculator: Cold Storage / Grain Storage Interest Cost by Bushel

Enter your own volume, value, and lending rate to estimate the monthly financing cost of holding inventory — the same interest-carrying logic behind the University of Kentucky’s $0.21/bushel benchmark at 10%.

Verifying Storage Data With Satellite and IoT Monitoring

USDA's national figures are aggregates reported by warehouse operators — accurate at the national level, but not a substitute for knowing what's happening at your own facility or in your own region between monthly releases. That gap is where independent monitoring earns its keep:

• Real-time facility monitoring: IoT sensors track temperature and volume continuously rather than waiting for a monthly aggregate, via tools like Farmonaut's Large Scale Farm Management solution.
• Traceability: Blockchain-based lot tracking confirms what's actually in a cold chain and where it originated, through Farmonaut's product traceability platform.
• Logistics and fleet coordination: Getting product into and out of storage on schedule matters as much as the storage number itself — see Farmonaut's fleet management tools.
• Environmental and carbon tracking: Cold storage is energy-intensive; Farmonaut's carbon footprinting platform helps operators track emissions tied to refrigeration load.

These tools are accessible via web, Android, iOS, and a developer API — see the API developer docs for integration details.

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A Durable Checklist for Reading Any Cold Storage Report

Whatever month you're reading this in, use this sequence rather than trusting any single cached summary — including this one:

1. Identify which report you need. Monthly inventory (pounds by commodity) or biennial capacity (cubic feet of warehouse space)? They answer different questions.
2. Pull the report directly from NASS, not a secondhand summary — the Cold Storage survey page lists releases by date and links to Quick Stats for commodity-level queries.
3. Read the percent change, then find the underlying pounds in the data tables if you need the absolute figure, not just direction.
4. Cross-check capacity against inventory. A capacity increase (like 2025's 7.8% jump to 3.99 billion cubic feet) doesn't mean inventory is rising — check the two separately.
5. Price in the financing cost of whatever's being held, using a current lending rate — the Kentucky AEC framework and the calculator above give you the method regardless of what rates do next.
6. Note the release date of whatever number you're citing, and check whether a newer one has posted since.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the USDA Cold Storage Report?
   A monthly NASS publication reporting end-of-month inventory, in million pounds, of beef, pork, poultry, butter, cheese, and frozen fruits/vegetables held in US refrigerated warehouses.
2. How is it different from the Warehouse Capacity report?
   The Capacity report measures total refrigerated space available (3.99 billion cubic feet as of the 2025 survey, next survey 2027); the monthly report measures what's actually stored inside that space right now.
3. What did the most recent report show?
   The February 2026 release showed beef cold storage inventory down 3% and pork inventory up 6%, both measured month-over-month, per USDA NASS.
4. Where do I find the current month's data, not an old one?
   Go directly to the NASS Cold Storage survey page, which lists releases by date, or query NASS Quick Stats for a specific commodity and month.
5. Does the USDA cold storage program cover fogging or humidification systems?
   No — that's outside the scope of the Cold Storage and Warehouse Capacity surveys, which report inventory pounds and warehouse cubic footage, not equipment specifications.
6. How much does it cost to hold inventory in storage?
   Financing alone — separate from physical storage fees — runs about $0.21 per bushel at a 10% interest rate for grain, per University of Kentucky AEC; the calculator above applies the same math to your own volume, value, and rate.

Conclusion

The USDA Cold Storage program is really two reports: a biennial capacity survey that stood at 3.99 billion cubic feet across 931 warehouses in 2025 (up 7.8% from 2023), and a monthly inventory report that most recently showed beef down 3% and pork up 6% for February 2026. Neither number is static, and the right move whenever you read a figure like these is the same: confirm the release date, then check the NASS Cold Storage survey page for whatever has posted since.

Pairing that official data with continuous, independent monitoring — satellite-based field intelligence, IoT facility sensors, traceability records — gives operators visibility in the weeks between official releases rather than only on release day.

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