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Limited farmer participation in surveys, declining agency purchasing power and staffing declines are among concerns raised by farm groups and data advocates weighing in on the Agriculture Department’s statistical programs.
USDA’s Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistical Service, and Office of the Chief Economist opened a request for comments in late February seeking feedback on its research and data collection process to help inform “future program direction, new initiatives, and potential funding opportunities,” according to a request for comment. When the comment period closed on April 9, the agency had received 238 comments offering a wide array of feedback, including calls to explore the use of more satellite technologies in its data collection efforts, recommendations to maintain funding for current reports, and suggestions to consider expanding data report offerings into new areas.
Similar points are likely to be raised at the agency's spring data users meeting, which will be held Wednesday.
Scott Hutchins, USDA’s undersecretary for research, education and economics, told Agri-Pulse that the public comment process was a joint effort meant to gather feedback on how USDA can improve its data and research systems.
“We’re always interested and passionate about continuous improvement,” Hutchins said.
In a comment, John Newton, the American Farm Bureau Federation's vice president of public policy and economy analysis, said his organization convened a 10-member group focused on finding ways to improve NASS. He said they determined that the agency’s budget “had been nearly stagnant for a decade while the complexity of data demands grew substantially” and determined the agency needed more training, computing, software and staff resources.
Newton said the working group’s findings “remain valid today and have only grown more urgent,” with AFBF staff observing that "resource constraints continue to affect the depth, frequency, and geographic granularity of NASS products.” He noted that budget pressures in recent years have forced the agency to reduce the number of states covered in cattle, swine and milk production reports.
He urged the agency to “advocate strongly within the budget process” for such resources.
"Report cancellations, reduced state-level coverage in livestock and crop surveys, and the loss of in-state statistical expertise have all created tangible gaps for producers and analysts who depend on these benchmarks,” Newton wrote.
A comment submitted by the American Statistical Association urged the agency not to look at expanding its data products, but instead ensure that funding is sufficient to support its current products. NASS has seen its number of full-time equivalent employees fall from 839 in fiscal 2023 to 389 in fiscal 2026, a 54% decrease in staffing over the three-year period, it said.
Meanwhile, ERS has lost 27% of its staff from FY23 to FY26, ASA’s comment said.
“To NASS’s credit, there’s been remarkably little impact on their release schedule” from staffing losses, Steve Pierson, director of science policy at the American Statistical Association, told Agri-Pulse. However, he added that as a result of the cuts, “there have to be some real strains going on, and there has to be some impacts that we’re just not able to quickly identify.”
Hutchins, the USDA undersecretary, said NASS has not “seen any loss of work product” as a result of staffing changes.
“They do 400-plus reports a year, they have not dropped a single report, haven’t dropped the quality of a single report,” he said. He added that NASS has been exploring AI-based tools and other technologies to help with data interpolation and has been looking at ways to become more efficient.
“They have been very committed to the mission, and they have not lost a beat with those kinds of changes,” Hutchins said of NASS, adding later, “We’re always looking for ways that we can improve and become more efficient and more effective, and that’s true for all of our agencies."
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Former Economic Research Service Administrator Spiro Stefanou noted that the cost of doing surveys has gone up, stretching both agencies' budgets more in recent years. He estimates NASS has lost 20% of its purchasing power since 2010, while ERS has lost more than 27%.
Spiro Stefanou (LinkedIn photo)“That’s going to be a challenge going forward,” Stefanou told Agri-Pulse. “It’s just not getting cheaper."
In his own comment, Stefanou urged the agency to make sure that its data releases are also accompanied by broader analysis, noting that “releasing data without the interpretive products that explain their meaning is, more often than not, only a half measure."
“Data is more than just numbers,” Stefanou said. “It’s the context that matters, too.”
Six researchers with NASA Harvest suggested in a comment that satellite data could be used to help determine active or fallow cropland status, crop type, and likely crop usage. They suggested satellite data could be more systematically incorporated into acreage analyses and could also help assess early warning and sampling frame development in crop-condition and yield estimates.
Hutchins said the agency is using more satellite data for estimates, and is also participating in USDA’s “One Farm, One File” initiative, which aims to increase collaboration within different parts of USDA to limit the amount of paperwork farmers need to fill out. He noted that USDA has seen declining farmer participation in some surveys and said it reflects a societal trend that may be fueled by a weariness of filling out too many surveys.
“It certainly doesn’t surprise us that society in general, and farmers being extraordinarily busy in every aspect of their business, would choose from time to time to not complete the surveys,” he said. “We try to do everything we can and will continue to make them easy to complete, and also to help them understand just how important that data is to almost every program at USDA."
Corn growers express concern about NASS estimates
Last August, NASS forecast corn farmers would produce 16.7 billion bushels of corn that year, a 13% rise in production from 2024. In a comment, Iowa Corn Growers Association President Mark Mueller said the estimates “surprised and angered” farmers, who by January of this year were “even more outraged” by another set of acreage and yield reports that projected a record-high 17-billion-bushel corn crop.
Mueller wrote that the August report resulted in a 3% price decline for corn farmers while the “massive increases" in corn acres in January led to a 5.4% drop in corn prices minutes after it was released.
"We are not saying that NASS and the trade must match, but when harvested acres and yield estimates are raised in January, that discrepancy puts more pressure on corn prices,” Mueller wrote.
Mueller also said Iowa corn farmers were “dismayed to learn” that a March 31 planting intentions report "was based on a record-low response rate of 37.6% among survey recipients.” He said that response rates continue to fall and as a result, “farmers, grain traders, and others involved in the supply chain have very little confidence in the accuracy or reliability of these reports.”
"In the past, farmers trusted information that was released by NASS, but that trust is rapidly declining and is no longer used or helpful in making planting or marketing decisions,” Mueller wrote.
Mueller called for NASS to better integrate FSA data and digital and remote sensing technology into its acreage and yield estimates and consider rehiring former NASS employees who left due to staffing cuts. Iowa farmer Lance Lillibridge told Agri-Pulse he believes NASS uses a “very outdated” methodology, and that farmers get frustrated with the agency revising its estimates because “they don’t get a second chance to market."
“My opinion is NASS needs to go bye-bye and it needs to be redone, and it needs to be better,” Lillibridge said. "It needs to be lots better. There just isn’t any trust in USDA right now and that’s unfortunate."
Jed Bower, president of the National Corn Growers Association, suggested the agency look for ways to increase grower engagement with USDA data decision-makers, such as through an agricultural statistics advisory council, roundtables or more data user meetings.
Comments seek exploration of new reports, revival of terminated ones
In a comment, National Association of State Departments of Agriculture CEO Ted McKinney suggested USDA make more data available on biobased products, consumer preferences, farm bankruptcies, feral hog populations, food insecurity, industrial hemp, precision agriculture, regenerative agriculture, specialty crops and vertically integrated farms.
Through an agreement with NASS, NASDA employs around 1,700 enumerators who help farmers and ranchers with NASS surveys, McKinney noted. RJ Karney, NASDA's senior director of public policy, told Agri-Pulse that updates made to the agreement last year have allowed NASDA to be “more nimble” in conducting survey work and better train enumerators.
RJ Karney (LinkedIn photo)Karney said NASDA would like to see USDA establish a National Agricultural Data Advisory Committee to help build a “trust factor” that would make farmers more willing to participate in NASS research.
Fertilizer Institute Chief Economist Veronica Nigh said in a comment that “a reduction in the level of data collected and a slackening pace of release have dramatically reduced the usefulness of fertilizer data disseminated by USDA” over the years. The agency has discontinued past fertilizer outlook, inputs outlook, commercial fertilizer consumption, and commercial fertilizers reports, she said.
NASS still collects some grower survey data on fertilizer applications through its Agricultural Chemical Use Program, though she said the timing of these surveys in unpredictable “and approaching five years for some crops like corn,” she added. She said it is “critical” that this survey be conducted on an annual basis and also said it would be “incredibly beneficial” for the agency to also collect regional and state-level data.
She also suggested the agency appoint a full-time crop inputs economist coordinator to the Office of the Chief Economist to analyze fertilizer and fertilizer product price data "that will provide timely, accurate, and reliable market information that can be readily understood by farmers and market participants and facilitate more informed marketing decisions.”
In a comment, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy specialists Becky Schewe and Nicholas Rossi urged USDA to reinstate two reports it terminated last year, NASS's Agricultural Labor Survey and the ERS Household Food Security Reports.
A USDA press release from last September called the Household Food Security Reports “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous” and said they "failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder.” The release said trends in the prevalence of food insecurity "have remained virtually unchanged, regardless of an over 87% increase in SNAP spending between 2019-2023.”
Schewe and Rossi said in their comment that “food security researchers and community organizations” relied heavily on the food security survey in their work and added that “no comparable independent data source exists to replace it."
The Agricultural Labor Survey was discontinued “to minimize duplication of federal efforts and reduce cost and time burdens to the public,” according to a Federal Register notice signed by NASS Associate Administrator Jody McDaniel. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects similar and “more useful” data on farm labor, the notice said.
However, Schewe and Rossi said the survey was the "only federal data source to provide comprehensive estimates of agricultural employment, hours worked, and wages at a regional level.” Without it, wage rate estimates "will be unable to accurately reflect regional labor market conditions and stakeholders will be unable to accurately measure trends in the agricultural labor market,” they wrote.
"The termination of these two data products is not an efficiency measure, it is a loss of irreplaceable public knowledge,” they wrote. "It undermines the credibility and nonpartisan integrity of USDA data."
