14: Evolving Toward Modernization of the Crops County Estimates Program

Music City Center 

The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Agency (NASS) estimates planted acres, harvested acres, production, and yield at the county, state, and national levels for 13 different crops each year in its Crops County Estimates Program (CCEP). Several data sources are available to inform these estimates. The County Agricultural Production Survey is conducted at the end of each growing season for this purpose. The USDA Farm Service Agency and the USDA Risk Management Agency collect administrative data from producers participating in, respectively, USDA crops or insurance programs. Because not all farms participate in these USDA programs, the numbers of planted acres and harvested acres in each administrative dataset provide, respectively, a lower bound and an upper bound. Depending on the crop, other data (e.g., the National Crop Commodity Productivity Index) can be informative. This poster focuses on the continuing evolution of the processes used to produce official statistics for the CCCEP. These include development of Bayesian hierarchical small area models, programs that round the estimates according to pre-set rules, and outlier detection.