Data Users Meeting

Monday, October 25, 2010, Chicago, IL

Opening Remarks

At the October 2010 Data Users Meeting, hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Hubert Hamer, Chairperson of the NASS 

Agricultural Statistics Board (ASB), welcomed the participants, who were there in record 

numbers. He noted that Carol House, the previous ASB Chairperson, had retired in March 2010, 

and introduced the panelists available to answer questions and take comments: 

Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) – Mike Lynch

Census Bureau (Census) – Carol Aristone

Economic Research Service (ERS) – Molly Garber

Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) – Patrick Packnett

National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) – Joe Prusacki

World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB) – Gerald Bange

Open Forum 

The questions, comments, and responses (R ) below are organized by general topic, rather than 

the sequence in which they came up.

Foreign Agriculture

Question: Do we no longer get attaché reports by email? 

R (FAS): The subscription service to receive alerts of attaché reports by email was disabled with 

the implementation of the new Global Agricultural Information System (GAIN). In order to 

make relevant reports accessible to a broad user base, the new GAIN search engine offers the 

option for 3-day and 7-day summaries of incoming attaché reports that users may bookmark in 

their browsers. The summaries provide the first four lines of the Report Highlights for each 

report along with a link to the full report. If FAS finds there is sufficient demand for an email 

subscription service, it will evaluate whether this type of service can be provided.

Question: Are you concerned about the 2010 Chinese production numbers for corn? What are 

the challenges in estimating Chinese production? 

R (WAOB): When we were in China, their analysts disagreed among themselves about the 

drought in the north end of the country. China has relatively small imports. But unless conditions 

change for 2010, the mid-160 million metric tons should be more than they produced in 2009.

I’m not as confident in the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as I used to be. They don’t seem 

to have motivation to give the best numbers. The commodity association estimates are quite 

different from those of the NBS. We continue to look at those numbers very closely.
Question: What is the status of the import data for livestock in Canada? 

R (AMS): We are still searching for credible data. We get some data from the Animal and Plant 

Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which is in the process of updating its process and system. 

APHIS installed new server upgrades, but nobody knew how to get the data out of the new 

system. When they did get it out, it did not look the same as the old database and they have to 

reconcile across species and weight to make it sound. APHIS is still struggling, and AMS has to 

do a lot of data manipulation once we get the data from them. APHIS’ emphasis is on inspecting 

livestock coming across the border, not the data itself. AMS has had to cease using the data until 

everything is resolved. 

Livestock and Meat Data

Question: Have you looked at the possibility of breaking the beef cold storage numbers into 

imported and exported? 

R (NASS): The cold storage information is completely voluntary. We ask them for what they are 

storing. We haven’t pursued whether it is domestic or imported. The purpose of the report was to 

report on the beef stock, not where it came from. 

Question: Can you break down to ground beef? Where are we today? 

R (NASS): We asked for input from individuals. We did receive feedback. We could not get that 

type of info from the warehouse facilities. What they are providing is what you are getting.

Question: Are the August 2010 livestock data incorrect? 

R (AMS): What we have put out is correct. We are still looking at it.

Question: In looking at ERS retail meat price data, it is interesting to see how much difference 

there is between those data and USDA data. Scanner versus USDA is of particular interest in 

margins. When are we going to get the right data? 

R (ERS): At this point, there are no plans to get scanner data. We don’t have the resources. 

Question: When will we see those LS-214 forms come electronically for feeder cattle, feeder 

lambs, poultry, etc.? 

R (AMS): When we made all of our data searchable, that was designed to help with that. We 

haven’t talked about making LS-214s electronic. 

Comment: As data users, we continue to do a lot of work on the LS-214s. 

R (AMS): So noted.

Question: We have been told that it will take two years for the pork export sales system to be 

built by USDA. For the Census of Agriculture, if USDA needs two years to get the pork export 

data, can Census begin building a system now, so that when the export sales data are ready, the 

Census system will be ready and we can have the data earlier? 

R (Census): No. There are a lot of requests to release data early. But it involves a Memorandum 

of Understanding with Canada. We do a dual release, and a lot of factors go into the date of 

release. We are always looking for ways to publish sooner, but right now we can’t get it out 

sooner.
Question: With respect to mandatory price reporting (MPR) for pork, what is the timeline for 

putting the numbers together? On the issue of hog weights, we get the hog weights estimates, but 

then it gets revised two weeks later. There has been a huge discrepancy on daily packer reports.

Please explain the first estimate and why it is off the last few weeks. 

R (AMS): The time line now is 18 months to get the final rule published. There are many nuances 

to negotiated rule making, including meeting two to four times and publishing the proposed rule 

in the Federal Register to let the public know we will be engaging in negotiated rule making.

Then more comments, although we expect the comments generally to have been addressed along 

the way. Then the final rule is published. If everything follows the timeline, we have four to six

months to get the software developed, packers educated, and systems enhanced. 

Hog weights – I have not looked at that. The differences you mention stem from differences 

between actual slaughter weights in the daily HG201 Prior-day Slaughtered Swine Report and 

weekly actual slaughter weights provided to NASS from the Food Safety and Inspection Service 

(FSIS) meat inspection data. The average weights reported in our Prior-day Slaughtered Swine 

Report represent barrows and gilts slaughtered by the packing plants covered by MPR or 

slaughtering more than 100,000 head annually. NASS’s data from FSIS represents all barrows 

and gilts from all plants under federal inspection.

Question: Why do mandatory price reporting weights not match NASS slaughter data?

R (NASS): The slaughter data are preliminary. NASS collects weekly and sums to monthly, and 

that is the best number we publish. Why is there a difference between the preliminary and the 

final? The plant data comes into NASS from the Food Safety and Inspection Service and we

can’t answer anything more than that.

Grain Stocks

Question: On the grain stocks report, it would be more useful to have information on where

within a certain state the stocks are rather than whether the stocks are on or off-farm. It would be 

more useful to have a total by state. 

R (NASS): We will look into that idea. 

Question: What about September 1, 2010, stocks? Have you considered moving back to an 

August 1 crop year to solve the cross-year problem? 

R (NASS): Crop year is set by statute. We would have to have a change in the statute. A lot of 

farm commodity programs depend on the crop year. We would have to look to see if this helped, 

or if it is a one-time issue. We will look at that.

Question: Since crop year is set by statute, is it possible to add a question about how many new 

bushels were blended with old crops? 

R (NASS): We could think about that. We now ask specifically about “old crop” corn and “old 

crop” soybeans for the 2009 crop and earlier. We could consider asking about blending.
Question: With respect to the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) 

report (pp. 1-2), will you address the same question about old crop/new crop on stocks if it 

happens again? 

R (NASS): The percent harvested on September 1, 2010, was about 6 percent of corn crop, a very 

small percent, but higher than normal. 

Comment: That would be 630 million bushels on a 13 billion bushel corn crop. 

R (NASS): Was that on-farm or off-farm stocks? This year’s September 1 on-farm stocks were

the smallest on-farm storage since 1990. The off-farm stocks were the largest since 1990. Every 

year is different. 

Question: When you measure the U.S. stocks reports, the methodology is clear. For the FAS and 

WAOB panelists, when you do the corn estimates and there are 60 million tons in China, there 

would be a negative usage. What is the methodology used to estimate foreign stocks estimates? 

R (WAOB): The issue is we don’t know what the stocks levels are. We come to some kind of 

consensus view among our analysts. We get input from the Chinese official staff. We get input 

from our weather staff. We do know they carry a substantial amount of stocks.

Question: Are those Chinese stocks defined as on-farm or off-farm stocks? 

R (WAOB): They are “all” stocks. There are lots of little farms with storage that doesn’t end up 

in official hands.

Question: On corn feed and residual, it looks like we end up with lower implied feed 

consumption for the third quarter. How did you reconcile that? 

R (WAOB): Let’s look at the corn balance sheet for the October 1 WASDE report. During 

lockup, we got 12.6 billion bushels. The September 1 stocks number came in much higher, 

implying feed use and residual was much lower than anything we’ve seen in the fourth quarter. 

That is still a large crop, but why did the fourth quarter look so low? If you look at the quick 

harvest (similar to 2006-07 and 2007-08, which also had early harvests), 630 million bushels had 

been harvested compared with 350 million the previous year. We think the extra 300 million 

bushels, perhaps because of the early harvest and better quality of the crop, went into exports,

and feed use was mixed with lower-quality 2009 crop and used immediately. The production 

number NASS gives us is the production number. We think some of that production has been 

used already. We increased 150 million bushels, reducing 2010/11 projected ending stocks.

Question: Is feed use a residual calculation? Could we do on corn what we do on soybeans?

R (WAOB): We don’t know what feed use is on corn. Soybeans have crush data but not feed. We 

don’t know ever know what the feed use actually is. 

Question: How are you doing quantifying dried distillers grain (DDG) substitution?

R (WAOB): We adjust our feeding level based on ethanol production and estimate how much 

will be used for feed. Historically, the residual correlates with the crop size. You have more 

feeding residual because they’ve used this year’s crop already. The years 2010 and 2007 are very 

similar, with early harvest. We looked at how much the feeding rate was then. That year had the 

lowest feeding rate in the fourth quarter and drove our view on feed and residual in 2010. But we 

don’t know what the feed uses are for corn.
Question: In the second quarter, the stocks were a lot lower than expected. Could you explain 

what happened? 

R (WAOB): We think the 2009-10 crop went into storage in bad conditions. It is similar to what 

NASS is saying. But if you ask farmers what their stocks are, they look at the silo and give us 

bushels. If the crop went in moist or light weight, some may have disappeared due to natural 

shrinkage. One thing we heard consistently last year was complaints about corn reaching grade.

Maybe exporters were mixing 2010 in with the 2009 crop. There was a larger than normal third

quarter usage for the 2009-10 crop.

Question: If we are finding stocks and are surprised as to what had happened to corn, are we 

confident in the 2009 corn yield? 

R (NASS): Yes, we are confident. Remember the vast majority of stocks in September were offfarm. 

Question: What about third quarter usage and shrinkage? 

R (NASS): We don’t have information on whether or not farmers were surprised by shrinkage.

R (WAOB): If you look at feed use for the 2009-10 year, you can’t necessarily explain it by 

animal feeding units. Maybe the 2009-10 crop is understated. But if you look at it over time, it 

might make sense. The numbers are what they are. Over more than one year, it should make 

logical sense. 

Question: Could we survey for feed usage? 

R (NASS): It would be difficult. But it should be easier than 20 years ago. It is always a 

possibility, but it takes resources and in the current environment those public dollars are not 

there.

Question: Would you clarify how to make sure the 2010 crop isn’t included in 2009 stocks? 

R (NASS): On-farm survey records are matched from September back to June. Our state and 

headquarter analysts look record by record to see whether current stocks are higher on farm. If 

they are higher, we call them back. Livestock operations could have higher stocks. But if they 

have new crop corn, we’ll work it out of the record. For off-farm stocks, we ask to include only 

2009 and earlier years. We go through the same analysis of matching the records back to June. It 

is almost a census of grains off-farm. We do call back if things don’t seem correct compared to 

previous years. It is always possible some 2010 got into the 2009 stocks, but we do everything 

we can to get them out.

Question: NASS collects information for monthly prices received and asks for total quantity of 

grain bought and total money spent. Have you ever thought about releasing the quantity each 

month? 

R (NASS): We don’t release the total volume purchased ever. We publish the percent by month.

The prices received surveys we do are geared to estimate the average price. They are not 

designed to estimate the actual amount the farmer markets. For rice and peanuts, we do show 

quantities, but not for grains.
Question: WASDE reports to the Chief Economist and through him to the Secretary of 

Agriculture and the President of the United States. We are concerned about the size of China’s 

corn crop. From the White House, we hear about more biomass acreage and E-15 ethanol. Is 

your team sending any warning flags to the Chief Economist, the Secretary, and the President 

about the very tight corn supply situation? 

R (WAOB): We do not play an active role in policy decisions. We have highlighted the tight 

situation for corn, but how this information gets translated into policy is not within our purview.

Crop Acreage and Yield

Question: With respect to acreage, there seem to be significant adjustments in October and 

January. Can we speed that process up? 

R (NASS): We do a March Planting Intentions sample survey and a June 1 Acreage sample 

survey. The September 1 Crop Production report looks at FSA-certified planted area for cotton, 

rice and peanuts, and the October 1 Crop Production report looks at later seeded crops. FSA 

can’t simply push a button and get a total at the end of the signup period. It takes FSA a while to 

process the information. The data stabilize mid-August for early seeded crops and midSeptember for later seeded crops.

Question: Please elaborate on how methods or responses vary by States. Our data agreed with 

yours except for Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Is there something in your 

survey that late-season revisions could affect the FSA data? 

R (NASS): There is nothing systematic that would bias small versus larger states. In the June 

survey, the sample size is 400 or so segments in Iowa. In June, we ask how many acres are 

planted and planned for each crop. There could be planned soybean plantings that do not get into 

the ground. As for matching up June data to FSA data, we could look into it. We are constantly 

looking to improve our procedures.

Question: Is there any reason NASS can’t make a statement about what percent of the crop in the 

objective yield survey has been harvested? 

R (NASS): We’ll look into it and see if it is possible.

Question: Between September and October we lost a lot of ears per acres, what happened? 

R (NASS): When you look month to month, there is a table for the objective yield states showing 

numbers of ears. Those are the “raw” objective yield counts. This is first year-over-year decline 

we’ve seen for a while. I’m not an agronomist and don’t know why. 

Question: Any ideas what caused this? 

R (NASS): We go to same spot each month. Early on we are counting anything with one kernel, 

so some ears might not make it. 

Question: When are we going to stop messing around with bushels and just use weights? That is 

a real problem, especially the last year. Exports use weights, why don’t we change? 

R (NASS): If you are asking about test weights, we don’t know what they are nor do we use them 

in our analysis. We weigh the objective yield samples for grain weight to get pounds per ear and 

grams per pod. 
Comment: Crop conditions have no meaning when a specific state drops 10 bushels and the 

index of the condition only dropped 1 percent. The universe of the sample needs to be changed. 

R (NASS): Is there a value to changing crop progress? We could discontinue crop progress today 

if we don’t need it. We have a cadre of 2,500 individuals who voluntarily fill out the crop 

progress report on a weekly basis. Do you want to get rid of it? It gets back to scarce public 

resources.

Question: Crop condition has turned into a beauty contest because people only look from the 

road, not getting into the field. The survey is not giving a sense of what is going on. People have 

lost track of what crop condition is. They need more variances. If it is green and tall = 80%. If 

not, then it is a drought. 

R (NASS): I agree. We have to look at this.

Question: Nobody argues with the test weight issue on objective yield surveys, but how 

comfortable do you feel about the on-farm storage test weight? Are you able to capture that 

effect? 

R (NASS): That is a potential issue. We ask for on-farm storage. Unless farmers have their own 

weighing facilities, they can only go by volume of bushels. Some look at their combine’s yield 

monitor, but those aren’t always correct because they aren’t calibrated often enough. 

Question: On the October crop report, do you recall what percent of sample plots were 

harvested? Was there any correlation between higher percent harvested to lower bushels 

harvested? 

R (NASS): Corn had 91 percent harvested. Soybeans had 84 percent harvested. So, there was a 

fairly high harvest rate, comparable to 2007. Is there a correlation between grain yield changes 

and more samples? I don’t know if there is a correlation. If you plot each month to final, in 

October everything starts matching about .95 on a regression line because we are getting real 

grain weights. Until you get real grain weights, it is difficult to set yield. We have several 

maturity categories before getting to “mature” and each is regressed each month. This year it is 

apparent those regression models didn’t hold true. There was some mention of warm nights in 

Iowa and that affected the crop. There was record nitrogen loss in field runoff. When we get 

grain weights, the forecast gets better.

Comment: It doesn’t help that we are 91 percent harvested, when in other years we were 70 

percent. It makes it hard to forecast. 

Question: On corn and soybean crop reports, once grain weight is in, are there other new data 

coming in between now and the final? 

R (NASS): We still have the last unharvested amounts and the December 1 sample survey. A

little is still sitting in the field on which we will get lab weight. 

Question: You have two yield models for crop reports. Would you discuss the differences? Can 

you talk about the two model differences between September and October? 

R (NASS): We do an objective yield survey, which includes field counts and measures, and the 

agricultural yield survey, which is a farmer-reported yield. On which did we see more change 

from September to October? In general, although objective yield showed 91 percent harvested, if 
you look at crop progress it was not near 90 percent. Farmer reports are still based on what they 

see, so likely the farmers have been slower to respond to the lower yields. This is similar to what 

we have been seeing in grain weights; the objective yield model overestimated until weight came 

in. Maybe agricultural yield is doing the same thing. 

Question: What are the processes you use in combining the objective yield and agricultural yield

surveys?

R (NASS): We do the corn objective yield survey in 10 states that together account for roughly 

85 percent of production. So the states are broken into two groups. One group of states receives 

only the agricultural yield survey, the other group of states receives both the objective yield and 

the agricultural yield surveys. For states receiving only the agricultural yield survey, we rely 

strictly on agricultural yield regression models to forecast final yield. In states receiving both 

surveys, there is not a formula we use to weight them together. We look at both surveys on time 

series charts, difference tables, and historical relationships with final yield. We have started to 

look at some modeling as two independent variables in a regression model, geometric mean, too.

We look at both of them and there is not a specific weighting factor. Early in the season and later 

in the season there is a different relationship between the month and the final. Later objective 

yield drives the final yield because of the harvested grain weight.

Question: This year we are finding significantly below average moisture and higher than average 

grain weight. Is it adjusted in your process? 

R (NASS): Yes, we adjust for both moisture and test weight.

Question: If corn comes in at 13.5, how do you get that back up to 15.0 for stocks? 

R (NASS): I’d have to get the formulas to show you. We do adjust.

Question: Did the objective yield corn in October get greater weight than the farmers’ survey in 

most prior years? 

R (NASS): To say that it had more weight than in previous years may not be a true statement.

However, knowing we had more than 90 percent of samples with a grain weight, we were more 

likely to look at final yield. We looked at both of them at the same time.

Question: In terms of objective and agricultural yields, were moisture levels in October at or 

above 15 percent? We are hearing a lot of reports of harvested farm corn at 12-13 percent 

moisture. Do you use the objective yield moisture level to go back and adjust the agricultural 

yield? If not, does it bias production down from the farmers’ survey?

R (NASS): I don’t know what the moisture percent is, but our lab procedures adjust to standard 

15.5 percent moisture and 56 pounds per bushels. When we look at the two surveys, we look at 

both of them, the farmers’ survey versus the final and the objective yield versus the final. They 

tell us two different things sometimes. 

Question: Do you ask the farmer what the moisture content is? 

R (NASS): No, we just ask for the yield.
Other

Question: Does AMS have any plans to make data available by zip code for cash grain bids? Or 

adding a dashboard? 

R (AMS): It would be nice to have a grain dashboard. We haven’t thought about it yet. The 

priority is livestock mandatory reporting first. As far as reporting by zip code, nobody has asked 

for this before. We try to keep to regions to keep the pool larger for confidentiality reasons. We 

can look into this.

Question: We are going to have a workshop in December on retail price spreads. We are using 

spreadsheets that are very old and that may or may not be accurate. We are concerned over 

conversion factors. Can we try again to get some accurate conversions? 

R (ERS): Penn State University collaborated with the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) 

to review and collect revised or new food conversion rates for selected packaged foods. The final 

report identifying the information assembled through the course of their investigation, including 

information obtained during an earlier conversion project conducted by the University of 

Minnesota, is under review. One of the primary findings of the study was the absence of new 

estimates, as well as diversity of factor estimates for some products. As a result, the designation 

of new “official” estimates in many cases may imply greater precision than the new factor values 

warrant.

Following the review, we plan to update the relevant sections of the Weights, Measures, and 

Conversion Factors for Agricultural Commodities and Their Products (Agricultural Handbook 

No. 697, available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/ah697/ah697.pdf). Anyone wishing to 

review the Penn State ILSI report or the University of Minnesota findings is encouraged to 

contact Greg Pompelli at ERS.

Closing Remarks 

Hubert Hamer noted that high response rates are crucial to good survey data and that getting 

farmers and ranchers to report to us is very important. He told the audience NASS needs their 

help in getting farmers and ranchers to report. He thanked the panelists, the meeting organizers, 

and the audience for the lively participation. He noted the record turnout at this meeting and 

stressed that all the agencies will pay attention to the input and review what they can do to 

improve their processes.