By Chris Clayton
While trying to point to alternative data options, USDA continues to draw complaints from industry and members of Congress for canceling a few key market reports for this year.
The National Agricultural Statistics Association (NASS) -- pointing to congressional budget cuts -- announced last month that it would cancel the July Cattle inventory report, and discontinued county yield and production estimates for crops and livestock for 2024. NASS is also discontinuing the Cotton Objective Yield Survey.
As USDA has gotten more industry complaints, NASS has now set up a May 8 webinar to "spotlight available data for recently discontinued programs." The webinar will highlight some other NASS reports as well as the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Risk Management Agency (RMA).
The webinar registration can be found at: https://www.nass.usda.gov/….
Lawmakers Ask Usda to Reverse Decision
A bipartisan group of both Senate and House members from farm states late last week wrote Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asking USDA to reverse its decision. The letter was signed by 71 House and Senate members -- 59 Republicans and 12 Democrats.
Lawmakers noted NASS had taken a "modest" budget cut -- 11% roughly -- but the lawmakers called on USDA to work with Congress and stakeholders to find another way to cut costs.
"While we recognize that NASS has seen a modest year-over-year appropriations reduction, we hold that the costs to industry will be more adverse than the cost-savings NASS may realize through the cessation of these reports," the lawmakers wrote.
NASS received a budget of $187.5 million for fiscal year 2024, down from $211.1 million in 2023, or about an 11% cut. At least some of the NASS budget for 2023 was higher because the agency was trying to finish the updated Ag Census. The allocation also came in March, six months into the budget year.
Troy Joshua, NASS director of the statistics division, said in an April USDA statistics users' meeting that the budget forced NASS "to make decisions that are very uncomfortable."
The lawmakers' letter had the backing of several major agricultural lobbying groups.
"AFBF is disappointed in NASS's decision to drop these crucial reports," said Zippy Duvall, a Georgia farmer and AFBF president. "County crop and yield estimates provide important data for markets and research, and the decision to cancel the Cattle inventory survey runs counter to USDA's previous commitments to improve fair, competitive and transparent markets.
Users Point to Need for County Data
At the USDA data users' meeting, several industry stakeholders spoke about the effects of dropping those reports.
Bevan Everett, a commodity analyst with Stone X in West Des Moines, Iowa, told NASS officials that the county-level data offers companies "deep dives into regional supply" when they are looking at origination, storage and future facility plans. Dropping the report "is blinding the industry in grain quite a bit," he said, adding, "It is an extremely important report, and I was wondering if the budget is being moved around to maybe other efforts, maybe to other pet projects of the administration or something? Because it's an extremely important bit of data. I would like to have it back."
In response, Lance Honig, chair of the Agricultural Statistics Board, said, "If the budget supported it, we are in the business of ag stats, and we would love to cover everything we can. We certainly didn't shift any money around due to any pressures or initiatives from above, sideways or anywhere else. We received our appropriated level, albeit halfway through the year. As a result of that, we had to make some judgments to be solvent."
Max Fisher, chief economist for the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA), said he didn't want to "keep beating a dead horse" on the county data, but information is used like "little mini" supply-and-demand estimates for grain and feed facilities around the country. The county data is also used by exporters.
Not too long ago, NASS county surveys drew a lot of criticism from producer groups that pressed in the 2018 farm bill for the Farm Service Agency to use county data from the Risk Management Agency (RMA) crop insurance data rather than NASS data. Producer groups claimed RMA data was more accurate than NASS surveys.
One reason county-level data was dropped is the extra costs and work required when producers simply fill out a survey and return it. NASS is required to get 30 survey responses for each crop in a county, or at least three producers that represent at least 25% of a county's crop production. Each failed effort to reach the minimum then takes a more costly effort to collect the needed data.
A 2017 report led by Robert Johansson, then-USDA chief economist, pointed to farmer response rates for NASS acreage and production surveys falling from as high as 85% in the early 1990s to below 60% in some cases. The report cited there was an "acceleration in the decline in the last five years or so, suggesting the possibility that this decline reflects a long-term permanent change."
Still, the 2017 report noted, "The NASS estimates are viewed as the gold standard at USDA since they are developed from a statistical framework that surveys large and small farms in an area-weighted probability sample."
Johansson's report also noted USDA freely provided its survey information so both buyers and sellers have equal access to the data. "In a market without this free information, large firms might well be able to invest in market intelligence that small firms and farms would not have available."
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