USDA Crop Data Reliability Remains Under Scrutiny

Reuters’ Tom Polansek reported that “the U.S. Department of Agriculture, long the world’s gold standard for crop estimates, faces mounting doubts about the reliability of its data from farmers, grain traders and economists following deep staff losses and a sharp upward revision in how many acres of corn were harvested.”

“Farmers, traders and food manufacturers everywhere closely follow monthly USDA reports on production, supplies and demand so they can anticipate prices and inventories,” Polansek reported. “Thousands of employees left USDA last year as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to shrink the federal government, and experts worry the shrinking staff hobbled the agency’s ability to produce accurate and timely data.”

“USDA’s final estimates in January for how many corn acres farmers planted and harvested in 2025 represented unprecedented increases from initial estimates in June. Already-low grain prices sank more than 5%, at a time when growers were struggling to make money,” Polansek reported. “…The revisions prompted USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, which releases acreage estimates, to launch an internal review, said Lance Honig, a top NASS official.”

“As part of its review, USDA will confirm its procedures worked as they should, Honig said,” according to Polansek’s reporting. “The agency is also exploring options for improving harvested acreage estimates, most likely without more farmer surveys, he said.”

AgWeb’s Tyne Morgan reported in mid-January that Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden said that “we may not like the (January estimates) report, but it is not necessarily inaccurate. USDA market moving data will be more closely scrutinized going forward, and will begin to be held accountable for large revisions if it is a fault of the agency. We plan to have NASS staff available at the Ag Outlook Forum this year to answer questions as well. We will find out in September of 2026 if their current estimates were off based on revisions made at that time. If we notice a trend in errors we will review the way the statistics are calculated.”

Experts Say Staff Losses May Have Contributed

Reuters’ Leah Douglas reported in December that “more than 20,300 employees left the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the first five months of the administration of President Donald Trump, about a fifth of staff, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general.”

“The proportional hit fell harder on some smaller agencies,” Douglas reported. “The National Agricultural Statistics Services lost 275 employees, or 34% of its staff; the Economic Research Service lost 29%, or 84 employees; the National Institute of Food and Agriculture lost 35% of its staff, or 169 employees.”

Polansek reported that “Honig said it was not clear why USDA’s initial plantings estimate fell short. In August and September, when USDA mostly increased the plantings estimate, the statistics service incorporated Farm Service Agency data as part of its typical procedures.”

“In the first half of last year, Farm Service Agency lost about 24% of its employees while the statistics service lost 34% as USDA employees resigned, retired and were terminated, according to government data,” Polansek reported. “With fewer workers, Farm Service Agency focused on providing money to farmers, its primary function, not on processing and reporting plantings data to be incorporated into acreage estimates, said (Spiro) Stefanou, former administrator of USDA’s Economic Research Service.”

“Honig said FSA reported and processed plantings data a little slower but that he could not speak to the reason or about staffing in general,” Polansek reported.

Declining USDA Survey Response Rates Also Remain an Issue

Polansek reported that “analysts said farmers’ reluctance to respond to surveys and last year’s increased plantings may have also made it difficult to estimate acres.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation’s Bernt Nelson and Samantha Ayoub reported in July 2025 that “estimates for row crop acreage and production come from USDA’s quarterly Agricultural Production survey issued in March, June, September and December in all states other than Hawaii.”

“This data, published in the Crop Production Annual Summaries, is used widely due to the wide swath of information it contains. It is used by farmers to make decisions about marketing or storing grain, financial institutions for analyzing credit decisions, industry analysts for developing forecasts and many more,” Nelson and Ayoub reported. “This makes data integrity crucial.”

“Response rates for these surveys have fallen from 80%-85% in the 90s to just 46% in 2024,” Nelson and Ayoub reported. “Notably, between 2019 and 2024 the response rate dropped below 50% for the first time with fewer than 74,000 responses out of an average of 148,000 surveys issued since 2020.”