WASHINGTON DC (October 19, 2019) — At a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley, questioned Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Stephen Censky on the accuracy surrounding the department’s crop-reports. Sen Grassley has heard concerns from constituents around the state during his annual 99-county meetings relating to the accuracy and dependability of the USDA’s crop reports and data-collection tools. Sec Censky acknowledged those concerns and reported that the USDA is actively working to make the crop-reports more accurate for farmers.
“At least a couple of times during my town meetings this summer, I’ve heard there’s been a lot of distrust among farmers when these crop reports come out that feel just very unrealistic. The extent to which, you probably feel they are very accurate but you understand farmers feel that they aren’t considering crop conditions this year — wet spring, late getting the crops in, dry during July and August, etc — so give us an update on how you think that the crop-reports are accurate or the extent to which they aren’t that you’re going to take some steps to do that. In regards to what you’re going to say to me, if you say they’re accurate and the best you can do, I think you ought to do more to let the farmers have a feeling that it’s a good faith, intellectually honest approach,” Sen Grassley said.
“Thank you, senator, and I agree with you about how important they are. We know that they’re relied on by not only producers but markets and the trade really sets the standard of how other private forecasts are judged versus the USDA forecasts. So we know how important that is. We have a long history of making sure those are as accurate as possible. But we are taking a look at how we can utilize some of the new technologies to further improve that as well. This spring, we had a situation where after the survey was done of producers, it just continued to rain. And we’re going to be implementing a pilot this year of using and buying even more satellite data so that when we have a very unusual year where conditions change from the survey-time of plant and farmers' intentions to the time the survey-release comes out. If it continues to rain, we’ll be able to utilize rather than just the survey information, also the satellite information and other information to give the best forecasts. So I agree with you that this is always something that we can do better and are we’re very much willing to do that,” Sec Censky responded.
