2016 Chicago Data Users Meeting

National Agricultural Statistics Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

October 18, 2016

Introductions and Opening Remarks from agency representatives within USDA

Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS)

Economic Research Service (ERS)

Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS)

Farm Service Agency (FSA)

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)

World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB)

U.S. Census Bureau (Census), Department of Commerce

Questions & Answers

Note: The following write-up presents a topical summary of issues discussed during the 

afternoon open forum. Material is presented in chronological order.

Attendee: Regarding the NASS August and September Crop Production reports. With reduced rate 

of farmer response to the farmer survey has the estimation process been changed?

NASS: No. There has been a lot of discussion lately about falling response rates which is 

something that not only NASS has experienced but anybody who collects data has seen 

that over time. A couple of things I wanted to share. Number one is that despite what I 

think some of the impression is, our response rates are still at very good levels. Over time 

NASS has monitored this and we periodically conduct non-response bias studies to see if 

non-response biases the results we’re getting. We’ve continued to get generally 

favorable results out of those studies indicating that we’re not seeing problems with our 

data because of the falling response rates, at least at this time.

Attendee: Are you using yields obtained from remote sensing in the estimation process to help fill 

holes left by the lower response rates?

NASS: We have not changed any methodology based on remote sensing. NASS has had remote 

sensing information for years. The only thing that changed this past month is that we 

published those two new maps in the briefing package. When we are setting yield 

forecasts, we are utilizing a multitude of indications, we’ve got our farmer based survey 

where we contact thousands of producers each month and ask them to tell us what they 

expect their yields to be. We also have our objective yield surveys where we send 

enumerators into fields to take counts and measurements within those plots. Remote 

sensing is another source of data that we tap into. We merge all of those sources together 

to establish those yield forecasts and from a methodology standpoint, none of that has 

changed. 

Attendee: Comment for NASS, it was just at this meeting a year ago that we first talked about the 

need for adding the additional weight breakdowns in the Cattle of Feed report. Dan was 

very responsive on that and to have results back in one short year, my hat is off to you. 

Thank you very much. 

The other compliment is for AMS, the speed with which the decision was made to add 

the prices from the fed cattle exchange into the weighted average prices was very much 

needed. 
NASS: If you look at the handout that was provided, for the state level data we will be providing 

one additional weight group, however, at the U.S. level we are providing three additional 

weight groups and that was because once you start breaking out the data it gets too thin at 

the state level and we have problems with confidentiality. I think the main importance is 

getting the extra breakout for the U.S. The plan is to beginning publishing the additional 

breakouts next February in the Cattle on Feed release.

NASS: Another change based on a comment from last year is that whenever we make changes to 

our Quickstats database, it is causing problems for users that use an API to access the 

data, it can break the application. NASS is going to publish a change log on our website 

detailing changes made to the Quickstats metadata so that users are aware in advance that 

NASS is going to make a structural change that may affect you.

Attendee: In the database for the September Crop Production report for soybean pod count you 

listed 11 state because you show an aggregate pod count for the 11 state area but you 

don’t count Arkansas, how do you come up with 11 states?

NASS: In September we don’t publish Arkansas but eventually we will, the question is do we 

change the titling from month to month, we are still working on that.

Attendee: So was it an 11 state number of a 10 state number? 

NASS: It was a 10 state number. 

Attendee: In regard to remote sensing data, would you like to comment on what you think the 

accuracy this kind of data provides?

NASS: We get a lot of value out of all of the information that we have, whether it’s our survey 

data or remote sensing. Some of the greatest value that we see in remote sensing is the 

ability to identify and highlight problem areas or good areas. If you look at the map we 

published, it really helps zero in on where some of those changes might be occurring or 

where differences might be occurring. I have folks ask me this all the time, what’s the 

weighting scheme you use between the three indications and what I tell them is, it varies 

from crop to crop and month to month and even state to state. 

Attendee: Joe, you mentioned the API at NASS, is there any effort underway to put some of the 

FAS data or Seth the new WASDE data, make that available through an API?

FAS: Right now at the moment, I am not sure exactly, I don’t think there is any ongoing efforts 

to make it available at this point through an API. I can take that back and talk with our IT 

folks about it. 

WAOB: For the WASDE database, we are constructing the database and we will think about it. If

you’ve got some things that you’d like to see, ways to access it, I would certainly like to 

hear. We want to make sure that we get that data out there, error check it, and make it 

available to everybody. 

AMS: For MARS, the system we are building, part of the project is to build an API and make 

the data available. 

NASS: Government wide there is a push toward making sure that data are available openly and 

that we all use API’s. I think you will see that more and more as we move forward and 

modernize systems. 
Attendee: (This was a response to the previous question by an attendee from Cornell University) 

I know that we (Cornell) manage a lot of the reports and datasets for 5 of the agencies 

represented on the panel, including OCE/World Board and AMS as well. We actually 

have started reconstructing our database so it has an API because we are hearing time and 

again how important that is. 

Attendee: Question for the World Board, is that going to be for raw data or does that include the 

reports as well in that database that you are going to be building? 

WAOB: This is going to be purely all of the data points in an individual WASDE and constructed 

in a single time series. The idea is either to be able to trace out a single variable as it 

occurs through time or pull out year ending stocks for June for the last 20 years. 

Attendee: There is great interest at Cornell among a lot of the researchers in cover crop data, and 

the acreage of crops specifically for cover crops to improve the soil so not necessarily 

grown for feed or commodities and markets. Is there any kind of momentum to collect 

that kind of data moving forward? 

NASS: Currently we don’t have any plans in place for our annual program specifically for that 

issue. In ARMS Phase II, there is an indicator for cover crop but it is not a published 

estimate.

FSA: The Farm Service Agency collects cover crop data, we used to collect it but it was kind of 

hidden. Wheat for example is sometimes used as cover crop, now we have a crop code of 

cover crop so instead of looking up cover crop for wheat, corn, grasses if you look on 

your crop code of cover crop then we break it out by other categories, grains and grasses. 

So we are starting to collect that data for this first time this fall, so you will see that 

reporting from the Farm Service Agency. 

Attendee: Seth, it’s obvious that the soybean group at the World Board has become much more 

aggressive this year and I just want to commend them for that. As a long time analyst and 

a long time board watcher, it’s refreshing to see. When you combine the corn and 

soybean and wheat exports, I think it’s 5.225 billion now that’s out there. The question 

we have as analysts is do we have the capacity to get that much out? Is there any sort of 

information that the World Board can share on that, what you guys think the capacity is?

WAOB: Clearly we consider these things whether or not we can do this but I think sometimes 

those constraints tend to be historically be overblown when we think about the ability to 

handle some of those volumes. We don’t have a huge dataset where we track the 

capacity of those facilities down at the gulf, we don’t do that but clearly we do have some 

experience at looking at this and considering those kinds of factors. So I don’t know, I 

don’t have any capacity data to share but AMS transport group may have some of that 

information. 

Attendee: Lance, I don’t want to beat a dead horse here on the farmer surveys, but you said you 

were OK compared with everyone else and you are satisfied with the number. Obviously 

Johansson came out and that was the number that got everyone’s attention, 66.8% for the 

quarterly stocks and Small Grains Report which was the smallest participation rate in 

history for that report I believe correct? 

NASS: Correct.
Attendee: Ok, so now we have the Crop Production Report in October and you were kind enough to 

reply to me on Twitter at 71.6% can you put that in historical context first and second off, 

is there any sort of plan to get these farmers back engaged? 

NASS: There are a couple of specific things I can point to. One, we have created internally a 

Response Rate Review Team to look at the topic of response rates, how we’ve gotten 

where we are at and what we need to do moving forward to ensure we stay on a good 

footing and actually improve. The second thing I would mention is as a result of 

specifically ARC/PLC there’s been a real push all across the Department, the National 

Corn Growers in particular have been kind enough to join forces with us as well to launch 

an effort to try to get the message out to producers that more reporting means better data. 

One of the challenges we’ve always faced is producers don’t always make the direct 

connection between filling out that survey form and there being a benefit to them directly 

because they are getting their information from someone other than the NASS report 

typically. But the person they are getting it from is typically using NASS reports to make 

those decisions and recommendations. We are trying to work with all of the different 

groups we can to get that messaging out there. One of the suggestions I would make to 

everyone in this room is that if you’ve got any influence with producers, obviously you 

are here because you are utilizing our data, if you could help carry that message back as 

well, I think ultimately that’s what’s going to help, is they’ve got to realize there is 

actually a benefit to them to reporting on these surveys. 

Attendee: Is the 71.6% an all-time low?

NASS: I don’t know all of the history off the top of my head I can tell you that it is a little bit 

higher than it was last year, so it’s certainly not at a historical low level and in fact it 

moved in the right direction this year. Hopefully some of our efforts recently are paying 

off. 

Attendee: The data release times that you are providing have spoiled me except for one dataset that 

would be GATS (Global Agricultural Trade System), it’s supposed to be released at 

8:30am EST every month, it’s usually between 10:00am-12:00pm EST before the export 

data is released. I was wondering if that could be looked into and maybe be a little more 

on schedule?

FAS: It’s something we can look into. Many years ago we used to have an agreement where 

we got that data in advance and would be able to process it through our GATS system 

and have it available on time. We don’t have access to the data in advance anymore so 

once it’s released from Census, we have to process it into our GATS system at FAS. It is 

somewhat of a labor intensive process to get it all up. It is something I can take back and 

talk to folks about. 

Attendee: We always have a problem tying the GATS data to the weekly export inspections or FAS 

sales data. Is there any way we could ever get that more close? I understand they are not 

exactly the same databases but as you know on a calendar year basis they don’t add up to 

the same amount and along with that the beef and pork aren’t even remotely close. 

FAS: You are talking about 3 different datasets that all represent different data. The export 

sales data is sales and shipment data reported by exporters, the inspections data is the

GIPSA inspections data that they inspect as the product goes out of the country, and 

Census is the official exports as reported by the exporters through their process. My 
colleague Pete Burr works with Census closely to monitor what’s going on with the 

export sales data vs. the Census and when things get really out of line, they have a 

process they work through to reconcile the differences. What he is able to do is reach out 

to the exporters that are reporting data to him and make sure that there are no errors in the 

information. Sometimes companies might report a sale for export that was a domestic 

sale and things of that nature so it’s an ongoing process of trying to make sure that our 

data is reasonable and correct but I can’t guarantee you that they will ever be the exact 

same. Some of the livestock export data, that’s one of the newest additions to the export 

sales reporting program, it’s been out there for a number of years now but they are 

continuing to work to try to make sure that we have all of the reporters that are shipping 

those products. 

Census: The data that comes out of the U.S. Census is completely separate from USDA’s 

collection process. It’s a system setup by Customs and sometimes what we wind up with 

is what we call estimated shipments. Somebody knows they are going to export 

something down the road and they go ahead and put it in the Customs system, then they 

are required by regulation to go back and fix it. If you look in your packets, if you come 

across any questionable data, there is a formal process to begin an investigation. 

Attendee: I have another question about pork and beef exports. You recently started releasing data 

breaking down pork exports by part with higher frequency, I was wondering if we can 

expect something similar for beef anytime soon? The pork export report number is 

LM_PK640 there’s a weekly breakdown by part of export sales and trade volumes. I was 

wondering if we would ever see any types of similar report for beef because the beef 

export reports are not currently broken down in as much detail.

AMS: With beef we are looking into it. There’s a lot of translation codes to go through to sort 

through the data. Specific companies make specific cuts for certain countries so there is a 

little bit of work to do to find that common denominator for particular cuts if they are all 

making something slightly different. We do show an export volume that is included with 

the comprehensive boxed beef cutout. Up to this point we have not been able to show 

individual cuts to get around the confidentiality aspect if everyone is making a special 

item. Our staff has been looking at that, I don’t have an ETA on when they would be 

able to put something out but that’s something we are exploring. 

Attendee: I have a question on how you view bias in your numbers from a historical standpoint. Just 

looking at the soybean yield from October to the final report, it’s increased 9 out of the 

last 10 years. I was just wondering if you take these biases into account, if you look back 

at how you’ve done historically? This year it looks like it might appear it’s been 

corrected for at least so far. 

NASS: We track all of our indications over time, that’s a big part of determining what the 

indications we have this year mean. Past performance is definitely a big component of the 

analysis that we do each month.

Attendee: Cross border shipments into Canada and Mexico are not typically inspected. I think that 

could be one of the processes that happened here at an inspect level which reports vs train 

transportation across, I know it is sometimes caught at the USDA shipment scenarios

through their sources and of course it will eventually be with Census down the road. I 

think that is one of the issues that you’ve got to deal with is that you’re never going to get 

that train report as timely as it should be until later on. Also, last year we had quite a 

discussion about the whole process that we had setup here in the U.S. for crop condition 
reporting. And I wanted to ask Lance to go back to it this year to see what he felt about 

any changes that have occurred or any improvement that have been put into the system 

because we have had stagnant numbers for three straight years. 

NASS: On the progress or conditions side, we really haven’t made any changes to that program 

in years other than some of the tools that we use. We are using essentially the same 

reporters, they are following the same guidelines. I have heard some of the comments, 

that it seems like conditions have been a lot less volatile over recent times but it’s not the 

result of any change in procedures. 

Attendee: One of the procedures that I think people in this room might not totally understand (about 

crop condition reporting) is the fact that when you look at the relative relationship of the 

weighting of the states, in essence it’s based upon last year’s acreage relationships as we 

go through time and not this year’s Planting Intentions or Acreage Report in June. 

Particularly this year it might have an impact from the standpoint that we had a 5 nearly 6 

million increase (in corn acreage). Is there any possibility that might be able to be 

brought into the same year vs using last year’s data? I know in many cases it’s a minor 

event but we’ve had some ups and downs of 7-8 million at a time, I think that could have 

influence this year. What do you think?

NASS: It’s certainly a possibility, we determine what weights we use. Historically we always 

used the previous seasons’ final acres. One of the concerns we have with using the 

current year’s acres is specifically the issue of volatility within the season because if you 

want to use this year’s acres, what acres are you going to use? Are you going to use the 

prospective plantings because that’s what you have soon enough when you begin the crop 

weather season. Prospective plantings are based on intentions so there can be a lot of 

change that occurs after that. One thing in particular that we have always been very 

reluctant to do is change the weights within the season because if you change the weights 

within the season then any change that occurs you don’t know if that’s because the 

condition’s actually changed or if it’s because you changed the weights. So when you 

talk about whether we use last year’s acres or this year’s acres that can certainly influence 

the actual condition rating but as long as the weights stay the same through the season it 

shouldn’t affect volatility through the season. It seems as if most of the concern the past 

two or three years has been that that condition stays pretty flat all season long and 

whether you are using last year’s acres or this year’s acres I don’t think that would 

change that particular aspect of it, it might adjust the level up or down. 

Attendee: I totally agree you have to stay with the prospective plantings weight you can’t start 

changing during the season but from the point of view of taking a better snapshot of the 

season you have from the standpoint of wheat, corn, soybeans, I think it is better to try to 

zero in on the year you are dealing with, not last year’s data.

Attendee: My question is for NASS regarding alternative crops, specifically regarding crops like 

triticale. When you go out to the western plains, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, 

and Texas a lot of those areas are saying more triticale acreage where it’s actually 

outpaced some of your smaller grains like oats and rye. Is there any talk about bringing 

those acres into the fold? Because there are implications there for things like wheat 

acreage on balance sheets. 

NASS: One of the things I mentioned during my presentation earlier was after the Census of 

Agriculture every 5 years we review our annual program. I focused on within 

commodities, adjusting states in and out. We do also monitor individual commodities as 
well. Over time if we find that there is a crop that’s becoming much more prominent and 

it looks like it needs to be part of our program on an annual basis then we will consider 

adding that in but again it would have to be considered in the context of resources and 

typically especially in this environment recently from a budget perspective, anything that 

comes in usually means something has to go out. We are not in a position of increasing 

resources so that is the balance we have to reach. 

Attendees: I want to congratulate you for putting the July 1 Cattle Inventory Report back in, that’s 

appreciated. Lance, you send tens of thousands of people out into the field each year to 

estimate the crops, Stats Can sends zero, nobody goes in the field. So I’m wondering 

where FAS and World Ag Outlook Board decides where a divorce from Stats Can is 

prudent and where it isn’t? How do you reconcile the fact that they’re using limited 

resources to come up with their crop estimates and they’ve been proven to be pretty far 

off in recent years, is there any discussion or what goes through your mind when you’re 

saying Stats Can come out with this and it’s a computer generated model? 

WAOB: First of all I engaged my colleagues at Stats Can in Rome a couple weeks ago on this 

process and it’s not as if they just started doing this when that report came out. So we 

have the same question, how should we treat this report relative to what you’ve done 

during history and had a good discussion with them and going to have on-going 

discussion with them. But it’s not as if they haven’t been doing this work in the 

background, so the indication from the Canadians was that we’ve calibrated this to how 

we’ve done things in the past. I won’t comment on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the 

Canadian reports other than to say we will treat this report similar to the reports they’ve 

published in the past and we have open communication with them on how to treat this 

because we are interested in it as well. 

Attendee: This goes specifically to the Dairy Products Report. Can you tell me a bit more about 

your revision approach to some of the stock numbers that are reported every month? My 

second question has to do with ERS and if there is interest in returning to a quarterly 

regional cost of production, a monthly cost of production we had that a bit ago on a 

regional basis that's been eliminated. My last question is about cold storage. What's the 

protocol for adding new products to the Cold Storage report?

NASS: First of all dairy products, typically the revision process is not any different than we 

handle any other commodity or any other report at NASS. Typically we will publish what 

we can when we do the survey. The following month if we get late reports or if we get 

someone to give a report from the previous month or we find that there's correction to the 

previous month based on the current month report, we will make those revisions as soon 

as we can. If it goes beyond one month then what we will typically do is revise the report 

at the end of the year in the annual report. For cold storage, typically if you want a new 

product in cold storage we will look at what we are currently publishing now but it does 

come to a process of if we are going to add a new product in cold storage we look at what 

can we get rid of because we can only cover so many items in the cold storage report and 

we like to look at cold storage as going to the same facilities we currently go to instead of 

adding facilities. 

Attendee: Suppose you were to add another cheese. That would probably be in the same 

warehouses you already have. What's the protocol, we would be interested in discussing 

that with you about adding something that we think would still be in the same 

warehouses just different product.
NASS: The Italian cheeses obviously have grown in popularity the last few years. I think the 

main thing there is to look at how wide spread they are in the industry, how much of the 

total cheeses they make up and can we publish them without running into any problems 

with certain areas being revealed or certain producers being revealed. So it's a 

combination of things we look at but actually what you said of sending us an email 

asking us to start publishing a new commodity is actually how things start.

Attendee: To your attention?

NASS: It can go to me or Alyssa Cowell-Mytar, our cold storage person, or if it's dairy products 

it can go to Donnie Fike. Then typically what we do is we go back out to industry and 

find out if there's other people in the industry that are looking for it because obviously we 

can't publish everyone's request that is specific for them.

ERS: There hasn’t been any talk that I’m aware of for changing the frequency of the dairy cost 

of production and I don’t know enough about that one in particular to know if the 

frequency is determined by some data constraints that prohibit a different level of 

frequency. This is something I can certainly bring back to ERS and explore if there is 

interest in that and if it's possible. It's something we can look into and hopefully pursue. 

We do have a new dairy analyst covering dairy for ERS and he's looking to do things 

differently, make improvements so this might be something we could explore.

Attendee: Question on Fats & Oils report, specifically on the mill stocks number. Do you adjust for 

seasonality at all in the report?

NASS: We have a regular reference period that covers a span of time but we do take into account 

the number of days in the cycle for the CAIRs data products that would be accounted for 

in the report.

Attendee: I have a request related to the Quickstats database. We've found Quickstats to be a very 

valuable tool on pulling out summary information but haven't been able to determine the 

exact shapes of underlying distributions. For example, for different years for different 

states we can't pull out the percentage of the dairy herd, percentage of milk production 

and percentage of farms by farm size categories. We'd like to be able to pull out 

individual rows of data to see the shapes of those distributions over time. We wouldn't 

need identifying information, there are 9,000 herds in Wisconsin, if we had 9,000 rows of 

data without any identification information on a farm level, we could then see the shape 

of the distribution.

NASS: We do have a process where you can request a special tabulation. You'd have to submit a 

request and we would have to take a look at that specific request and see if that's 

something we could fill without violating any of our disclosure rules. Basically the way 

that works is that you put in the request and if we can fill it, we would make that 

available to everyone so it wouldn't just be going to you.

More broadly we have a series of data labs. In some cases we will do a special tabulation, 

once we do that we will make it public and make it available to anybody who wants it. At 

times, especially with ARMS data, we will work with researchers to provide access 

inside one of our data labs so that some analyses can be done. Then we review that and 

make sure it doesn't violate any disclosure problems or rules before it come out. It's one 

way we can extend the data set but also make sure we absolutely address all of the 

confidentiality restrictions that we have.
Attendee: Couple of things. Appreciation for AMS, I think the addition of more information on 

premiums packers are paying for high attribute products, ractopamine free, natural, 

antibiotic free on the cattle side. There is demand from a segment of the buyers for more 

information on that part of the market especially as more and more claims are being made 

trying to reconcile that part of the demand side with what's actually available and 

bringing some realistic expectations as people plan going forward. On the weekly export 

data, we are finding that the pork export numbers have improved dramatically, now you 

can actually use them to make some reasonable forecasts of what the exports are going to 

look like. I think the July report on cattle not being reported was disappointing. 

Especially because the cattle industry has been in a transition period and the July report 

really helps anchor some of the forecasts and the expectations especially when you've got 

structural changes going on. The January report for instance showed the total cattle on 

feed being up but 1,000+ inventory was down so there was a discrepancy there and now 

more and more there's some question about how many more of the smaller feeders do you 

have out there that are bringing cattle to market and how much that is impacting pricing. 

Final question on the Hogs & Pigs report. The farrowing estimates have been all over the 

place certainly you miss quite a bit if you look at previous estimates vs actual farrowings. 

Any thoughts on what could account for that discrepancy?

NASS: We've seen pretty consistent response rates, I think livestock overall has had fairly good 

response rates over the years. We publish what producers are giving us and we try to 

make as much sense out of it and have everything flow together as well as possible. The 

farrowings that we have published seem to be right around 2.9 million, we've seen some 

big jumps in the litter rate the last two quarters are a record. Our goal is the inventory and 

pig crop to be as close as possible to reality and that's trued up every 6 months with 

slaughter when it comes in.

Attendee: The farrowing intentions is an estimate by the farm, I thought if you came in with these 

estimates always being off a certain percent that you would adjust for that when doing the 

Hogs & Pigs report. For example, if the farmers are always 3% off we are going to plug 

in a 3% correction number but are you telling me you don't do that? That if they are 

always 3% off you are going to continue to publish a 3% error. Is that my understanding?

NASS: No, we always try to make the best estimate we can out of the data that were provided 

and if we see that we are going one direction or the other we are going to compensate to 

get us the best number possible.

Attendee: The Hogs & Pigs report needs some work. You've revised the pig crop up an average of 

2.5% over the last 9 quarters and only one has been zero, one was 4% plus. That’s pretty 

systematic error. If you look at the litter rate chart one would conclude from the litter rate 

historical data that PEDV did something to permanently reduce the rate of litter size in 

the United States because the upward trend that we were on before PEDV shifted to the 

right and we have not gotten back to the previous levels. Those animals were making 

genetic progress all during that time, they should go back to the same line. Logically I 

don't see how the litter rate can be as low as it is right now given historical genetic 

capability of this herd. If you account for the pig crop discrepancies by changing the litter 

rates, you get right back on the line we were on before PEDV. PEDV did not cause the 

potential litter size of this herd to go down forever, we ought to be back on the pre PEDV

line and the USDA data is not there. I think that is the reason we are missing the pig crop 

low and most of the time that's not a real big deal but I'll guarantee it's a big deal this fall 

to miss crop low this last spring and it's going to be a big deal again next fall even with 
two new plants. I would urge you to review your procedures and let's try and get the litter 

size correct.

NASS: If you look at a trend line going upward, we are not back to that trendline, however if you 

look at when we came out of PEDV we have gone up drastically. We've gotten some 

drastic increases and no we are not back on the trendline but to get back on the trendline 

you'd have to be assuming that PEDV never happened. We've seen some big increases in 

litter rate. Will we see more? I would guess so and I'm not a predictor of how quickly we 

should get back but again I am just using the data and putting out what we can based on 

the sows that are out there and based on the breeding herds. We saw a better utilization of 

the breeding herd this past quarter, 51%. We will continue to evaluate and try to make 

our numbers better. We do appreciate your comments because we do go back and talk 

about them and try to make things better.

Attendee: Every week we report the livestock weights as 5 week moving average and every week 

when it turns we are wrong. When you look at the AMS report on the preliminary 

production and then you get the actuals and all of a sudden the weights are higher. We 

can use mandatory price reporting data and get a much more valid measure of these 

livestock weights that really is production levels on a more timely basis.

AMS: I trust it's not as simple as one might think but we will look into that.

Attendee: With the farm bill programs moving to area based coverage where we are using NASS 

data for ARC and PLC, can you talk about what would need to happen to see corn, alfalfa 

hay, and milk prices reported for all 50 states?

NASS: You've also got to have enough data and when you get in to areas for different 

commodities where there are not a significant number of producers it becomes more and 

more difficult to get the data that you need to publish the results. Hay prices is one of the 

hardest things we have to estimate because where are you going to get hay prices? For 

grain prices we can go to the elevators, for peanut prices we can go to a finite number of 

sources but hay prices, that's a challenge because you don't have great centralized sources 

so you are probably looking at producers. Producers just because you grow hay doesn't 

mean you sell hay so you have to find producers who sell hay. Even producers who sell 

hay probably don't sell hay every month, so that one has challenges already. Now if you 

want to go to 50 states, it just magnifies those problems. We know there is more and 

more need for data with these programs that come along but there's some significant 

challenges associated with that.

Attendee: In the last Quarterly Stocks report we had surprise in the feed usage number and there is 

always some debate on how much of that was lack of feeding corn vs wheat even though 

cash wheat prices were far below corn prices out in the plains. It raised some questions 

maybe USDA had overestimated the size of the wheat crop. I was wondering is there any 

discussion of surveying the end users, the feedlots and getting their feedback on what 

they're feeding and how much, what their feed mix looks like? Further, break out “feed 

and residual” and have feed and residual.

NASS: The thought of trying to do a survey to estimate feed use is a daunting task. We've talked 

about that, it comes up periodically. I think it would be a huge, huge challenge and I am 

not sure how feasible that would be. We feel like we've got the most accurate estimate 

out there that we can based on the information we have. Wheat in particular there is a big 

component in there that nobody does have a measure on. It would be difficult to know is 
it a problem with the crop size or is feed and residual where that means it would be. Feed 

and residual is a derived value, we have to put the left over somewhere, so without a 

measure of that piece, which I know you are asking can you measure that piece, since we 

can't it would be difficult to definitively say that the crop size is off or not off.