NASS explains report cuts, alternatives

WASHINGTON — Budget constraints forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service to eliminate four crop and livestock reports.

NASS hosted a recent webinar to address discontinuing the July cattle survey, all crop and livestock county level estimates, and the cotton objective yield survey, noting there are other reports to fill those needs.

NASS received an appropriation of $187.5 million for fiscal year 2024 in March.

“That was pretty far below the president’s budget for FY 2024 and also well below our actual appropriations for FY 2023. You combine that with increasing costs and an implemented pay increase and so we had a fairly significant gap that we needed account for as we move through the remainder of this fiscal year,” said Lance Honig, Agricultural Statistic Board chair.

“We started out by going internally to all of our operations, both strategically and deliberately, to find all the costs savings we could. This included things like reducing travel and training costs, as well as looking at some of the interactions that we have directly with producers while we’re conducting surveys to minimize some of the costs there.

“And, quite frankly, we also virtually stopped all efforts we have underway to modernize our aging systems here at NASS.

“We did everything we could to avoid all the costs possible without having a direct impact on the customers, but unfortunately at the end of the day that in itself was not enough.”

Other Data

Troy Joshua, ASB executive director and director of NASS’s Statistics Division, noted other NASS data available throughout the year to track cattle numbers, including the monthly cattle on feed, milk production in 24 states, livestock slaughter, cold storage and dairy products reports, the quarterly cattle on feed by class, and milk production in all 50 states reports.

The January cattle report will continue, and Joshua added that the Census of Agriculture years provide a complete assessment of agriculture every five years at the, national, state and county levels.

“We realize that is not a replacement for the July cattle survey, but we do have data points for the dairy and cattle industry,” he said.

Regarding the county-level estimates, the NASS Cropland Data Layer Program provides cropland information annually on planted crops for the contiguous United States at a 30-meter resolution.

“We realize it’s not a replacement for county estimates, but we do have some information at that level,” Joshua said. “NASS also monitors agricultural disasters in near real time and provides quantitative assessment using Earth observations and geospatial techniques.”

Honig said county crop estimates can be found through other USDA sources.

“The Farm Service Agency as part of the work that they do comes in contact with a great deal of information about crop acreage, in particular, producers who want to a participate in any of the programs administered by FSA and others at USDA. They are required to report and certify their acreage planted information for various crop,” Honig said.

“As a result of that, FSA publishes that information. If you Google ‘FSA certified acres’ you’ll find it there starting in August and then finalizing in January they will post updates as to what those totals are by crop by county.

“You will get acreage planted, as well information about prevent-plant acres, acres failed, pieces of information in Excel spreadsheets that you can quickly and easily download to gain insight into some very complete acreage information by county for all the major crops that NASS was previously publishing at the county level.”

The Risk Management Agency, which oversees and administers the USDA crop insurance programs, also provides data about crops grown and insured in the United States.

“Through RMA, you can generate at the county level by policy type, yields for a number of previous seasons. You can go back and build your history for all of these products, as well as gaining insight into current data,” Honig said.

“These are both great sources of information that are out there for you to utilize some of the county level NASS previously published.”

Q&A

The second half of the NASS webinar featured a question-and-answer session.

How much appropriation will be needed money is needed to restore?

Joshua: For July cattle it costs approximate $550,000 to restore the program. The county estimates would cost approximately $7 million to restore the program.

The FSA has acres, but how do I get a yield idea at the county level. Is the RMA only place for a general yield idea?

Honig: From my perspective, it is the only source I am aware of.

Many are concerned about the lack of information will allow more manipulation of prices paid for commodities and the ability for wholesale and retail to exploit the consumer. How do you respond to that?

Honig: We certainly recognize the value and importance of not only this information, but all the information that we publish here at NASS. As I mentioned at the beginning, it is not our desire to have to stop producing any of the data products, but at the end of the day we have to operate within budget. The point is certainly recognized, and it is taken into account.

What is the best source of planted and harvested acres on county level?

Honig: Although it is up to each user to determine what they believe is the best data, the links provided for both FSA and RMA information are valuable sources of county-level acreage information.

For county-level estimates, does removing that program have an impact on the FSA data? Was that an input?

Honig: As we were finalizing our thoughts to achieve the needed savings, we reached out to FSA and had a conversation with them around how they utilize the data. And the bottom line is it will have a minimal, very minimal, impact on the work that they are doing.

They rely primarily on the RMA data. Changes were made a few years ago. In the past, yes, this would have had a big impact, but because of changes that they made and how they utilize the data, this really is not having a large impact on that process.

The NASS county-level data for major crops are incredibly valuable and represent one of the most important data products from USDA. These data support untold research efforts at universities and private companies. Is there any chance to restore funding in time to continue in an uninterrupted fashion?

Joshua: Right now, we are in the planning stages. There is time to bring the project back. When we first started the process, we had six months to the end of the fiscal year. Now we have five, or almost four months, that is left in the fiscal year. We would love to bring the program back, but we have to make a decision soon.

While other data is available, some of this data is just not very user-friendly and is not accessible for everyone. Is that a cosideration?

Honig: We certainly recognize the value of these data products, but had to make some hard decisions to ensure our spending remains within our appropriated total. We also understand that some alternative data sources are not as robust and not accessible in the same manner as the discontinued products.

Is the raw data for the Disaster Analysis tool collected from the same sources as the county estimates? If not, how do the two differ?

Honig: The disaster analysis work that we do is typically very heavily driven by satellite imagery and remote-sensing work. The short answer is no, it is not collected from the same source. In addition, we can provide clarity, but it is remote sensing driven or satellite driven. This is the information that is driven there.