The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service announced earlier this month that it would be canceling the July Cattle Report and other crop reports and estimates.
“The decision to discontinue these surveys and reports was not made lightly, but was necessary, given appropriated budget levels,” wrote the USDA in the recent notice.
The cancellations have been met with frustration from several industry groups.
Farmers are price takers, not price makers, and have no control over the markets in which their livestock is sold. Market transparency is essential where four companies control 85 percent of the cattle market.
“It is disingenuous for the same agency which touts its commitment to transparency in livestock markets to arbitrarily cease publication of reports which provide just that. While it may be politically expedient to blame appropriators in Congress for today’s decision, cattle producers know better than to believe discontinuing a handful of reports will result in substantive cost savings for the Department,” said NCBA Vice President of Government Affairs Ethan Lane. “NCBA calls on USDA-NASS to immediately reverse this decision and continue delivering on its stated mission of providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.”
American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall sent a letter to the USDA to emphasize the importance of the surveys, particularly the July cattle report.
“NASS’ two reports regarding the total U.S. cattle inventory, published on Jan. 31 and in late July, give farmers, ranchers, researchers, and other data users a full picture of supplies in the U.S. cattle sector at the beginning and in the middle of each year. This allows for a fair assessment of the cattle market for the next six months. Eliminating the mid-year report puts the market in the dark for the second half of the year, removes market transparency and increases market volatility. Data will only be available to those who can afford to collect it, further threatening competition in the packing sector.”
AFBF is also concerned that the loss of the Objective Yield Survey for cotton may also increase the level of uncertainty throughout the summer and early fall for cotton markets, and the elimination of county yield estimates will undercut the research upon which risk management programs, including crop insurance, are based.
“Eliminating county-level yield and production data for crops and livestock will also severely impact research from our land-grant institutions and only place the U.S. farther behind its trade competitors,” Duvall wrote. “Recent research by USDA’s Economic Research Service showed that the U.S. trails its global competitors in public agricultural research.”
