Farm Bureau Concerned Over USDA's Decison to Discontinue Reports

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service has recently decided to discontinue numerous reports due to budget cuts and needing to save roughly $24 million. American Farm Bureau Federation economist Bernt Nelson discusses the negative effects this will have on American agriculture.

“ They also made the announcement that they will be discontinuing the July cattle inventory survey as well as county-level estimates for both crops and livestock production and the objective yield survey for cotton. So these are really, really important reports that come out for both data users, farmers and researchers alike. You know, they're really important to all three levels, our farmers rely on this source of information, you know, to make decision-making right for decision making purposes.”

These reports are critical to the function of the agriculture industry, according to Nelson, and he states there is agreement on just how important these reports are.

“The announcement to discontinue this reports or these reports, and this data has definitely brought out a lot of unity amongst the individual data users and that doesn't whether you're an economist, farmer or a researcher, the consensus seems to be the same and there has been a lot of public outcry and movement towards getting these back on track. So I think we're going to see that in the days ahead that there's a pretty big push to bring this information in these reports back.”