prospective plantings

With the 2020 growing season about to begin for major field crops such as corn and soybeans, we’d like to walk through the surveys and data used during a complete season of field crop estimation. As a way to help you prepare for the 2020 data releases, we’ll explain in a series of articles the sources of data NASS incorporates into estimates as well as the timing and intention of the data as a way to let you know what to expect and how the data can be useful in your work.

A statistician’s work is never done.   Just as we are starting to wrap up data collection for the 2012 Census of Agriculture, interviewers representing the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) are already visiting thousands of farmers across the United States to find out their 2013 planting intentions.

While all of our surveys are important in their own right, the March Agricultural Survey stands out.  For those not familiar with our reports, the Prospective Plantings is one of the most anticipated publications of the year.   Commodity traders around the world wait for this report to give them an early indication of the upcoming year’s U.S. crop production.  As a result, the information that producers report to NASS can impact business decisions of input providers, farmers, agricultural lenders and others, as well as commodity prices.

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 the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

Earlier this month, representatives of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) spent two weeks contacting farmers and ranchers around the nation to find out how much U.S. farmland is planted to specific crops and to determine the number of livestock on U.S. farms and ranches in 2011.  In all, more than 35,000 interviews were conducted, with Texas accounting for about 5,000 of them.