This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.
It’s been said, “April showers bring forth May flowers.” For USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and others involved in farming, April also brings forth the start of each year’s planting season for many key U.S. crops and the weekly Crop Progress report series.
With the help of about 4,000 reporters, including extension agents, Farm Service Agency staff, and others whose jobs involve frequent visual observations of farms and interaction with growers, NASS tracks and reports on planting, maturity, and harvest of major crops, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton.
Crops take their cues from local climate, temperature, precipitation, sunlight, and a whole host of other factors. To address all of these as accurately as possible, we report crop conditions (from very poor to excellent), days determined to be suitable for fieldwork, crops planted and harvested, topsoil moisture conditions, and much more.
These reports become an extremely valuable tool when the weather decides to throw growers a curveball. Take the historic 2012 drought, for example. These weekly reports helped measure the scope of the drought, as we saw impacts on virtually every crop and pasture in most states that year. That’s why Crop Progress reports are closely watched by many farmers, agribusinesses, commodity traders, insurance agents, agricultural supply chain managers, federal, state, and local governments, economists, academia, planners, researchers, and decision makers.
What makes this report most unique and invaluable, however, is its timeliness. Each weekly report, typically issued at 4 p.m. ET on Mondays, adds to the ongoing story of U.S. crops through the growing season and what the crop and weather conditions were just 24 hours ago. Most respondents complete their questionnaires by early Monday morning and submit them to the NASS Field Offices in their respective states. Data from all contiguous states are then pulled together, analyzed, and published within just several hours.
So, while I cannot confirm April showers bring forth May flowers, I can verify that Crop Progress reports bring forth useful data year in and year out from April through November.