Integrating Varied Data Needs 

Into a Single Data Collection

Dave Aune

USDA/NASS

June 1, 2011

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop

 ARMS is an annual snapshot of the economic 

health of all farms and ranches in the 48 

contiguous states.

 ARMS is cosponsored by NASS and the USDA’s 

Economic Research Service.
NASS

 Farm Production Expenditures

 Agricultural Chemical Use

ERS

 National Sector Accounts

 Cost of Production

 Economic Impact Analysis

 Reports to Congress

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
Costs and Returns

Chemical Use

Cost of Production

 2 to 4 Commodities per year

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 Two versions of the costs and returns questionnaire

 Full version – detailed – personal interview

 Core version – general – mail/web

 One version for each cost of production target commodity

 For 2010: dairy, corn, organic corn

 All versions obtain enterprise expense and production data

 Items that do not require as large a sample size are asked on a 

selected version(s)

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 A large sample is screened to eliminate out-of-scope 

records and establish presence of cost of production 

items (Phase 1)

 The screened sample is selected to minimize overlap to 

previous year ARMS and current year Acreage surveys.

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 Mutually exclusive samples are selected for each 

version from the Phase 1 respondents. 

 Expenditure samples are a stratified random sample by 

sales class

 Cost of production samples are probability proportional 

to size

 A chemical use survey is conducted for all crops 

targeted for cost of production (Phase 2)

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 Sample sizes are determined from prescribed precision standards (target 

CVs), variance history, and response history.

 Sample sizes for the 2010 ARMS Phase 3:

Organic corn 627

Corn 3,266

Dairy 3,613

Full Costs and Returns 12,393

Core Costs and Returns 16,495

 The pooled sample (n = 36,394) is used to estimate costs and returns. 

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 Each sample in the ARMS comes with two 

weights: one for the version sample and one 

for the pooled samples.

 Weights have been scaled to frame totals and 

adjusted for nonresponse in previous phases.

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 List incompleteness is directly measured using the NASS area frame.

 Item nonresponse is addressed using a custom algorithm to impute data 

values.

 Weights are calibrated to 31 production targets based on official NASS 

estimates.

 Unit nonresponse is confounded with calibration.

Total = ∑ wix

i 

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop
 Minimize overlap of samples with two other burdensome 

surveys in Phase 1.

 No overlap across all surveys (versions) performed as part 

of costs and returns.

 Reduced (core) version of the costs and returns report for 

mail/web collection.

 Special analysis questions asked on selected versions.

Committee on National Statistics - Household Survey Producers Workshop