USDA wants better agricultural data while asking farmers fewer questions

Terry Gerton Secretary Rollins recently announced an ambitious data modernization plan there at USDA, saying she wants to reduce the burden on producers while improving the timeliness, accuracy, and usefulness of agricultural data. That all sounds like it makes perfect sense, but what’s wrong with the way USDA currently collects agricultural data?

Lauren Stump Well, USDA’s data enterprise, and in particular, I focus a lot on the National Ag Statistics Service in this, because that’s the agency within the remission area that we’re kind of really focusing on a lot today. That’s the gold standard for agriculture data, but we know we can always do better. So USDA will collect information from producers for a number of different reasons across many different agencies at different times of the year. And doing so and the intricacies of that can provide a lot of friction and burden for producers. So we know that we can always improve on how we do that and we have to improve and modernize to continue to meet farmers where they are, to meet their needs, and to meet the data dissemination needs in the reporting that is put out afterwards as well. So for example, we know there are better ways we can collect information from producers and then share that to them. There’s appropriate data sharing that we can do much, much better between our USDA agencies. So a farmer might report very similar data into FSA or NRCS within USDA, and they might report similar data in to NASS, that National Ag Statistics Service within USDA as well. And where we can share that information to minimize just the number of times that a farmer has to provide information to USDA, the burden on them, reducing duplicative questions while still meeting all the privacy needs and the requirements that we have, we should do that. So, this is a joint effort across many USDA agencies to figure out how can we make this process as seamless and easy and as least burdensome on the producer as possible.

Terry Gerton Well, it sounds like farmers will be happy to hear that. And in fact, before releasing the plan, USDA did gather feedback. You had an RFI, you had a series of listening sessions across the country. What did farmers and ranchers tell you through those venues that really shaped the plan?

Lauren Stump Yeah, absolutely. So direct farmer input was and really continues to be a huge part of this process and really important to where we’ve come and where we go from here. So Secretary Rollins rolled out the data modernization plan in early September, incorporating a lot of the biggest points of feedback that we had received all the way back from the RFI last winter. Feedback was gathered from many entities and farmers and other organizations as well throughout this year. And we held a number of listening sessions, particularly focused around late summer to hear directly from farmers and identify the different points of modernization. So there are so many details within each of the four pillars that were announced. And I think some of the biggest takeaways from that, without going into the minutia of everything that’s within that, but we heard that farmers want to decrease that burden on them reporting to USDA, no matter what the information is being used for. I mean, we also heard from a lot of them that in doing so we need to decrease those touch points that we have with them. We need to increase the use of say geospatial or satellite functions as we’re building out reports, but then we also need to respect their privacy. So there’s a lot that we’re working on to incorporate into this data modernization plan. But when we think about the reports that say NASS puts out every year, there are a number of new precision agriculture methodologies, geospatial techniques, satellite that can be drawn into that even more so than now and some new technologies and methodologies that we can bring into this to really help round out that statistical profile and that the informational profile so that we are providing even better statistical information than we have now and that’s really what we heard from producers is that they have the expectation as they should that the information that USDA and that NASS puts out is going to be the best that there is. It’s going to the gold standard and they want to make sure that we are using the most modern and up-to-date tools and technologies to make sure that we have that, but also that we are appropriately updating our systems to make sure that we’re sharing the information that we need to and we’re not relying on outdated systems that might have some friction and not allow us to share that information really readily so that we can have that balance of all the needs in this environment and make sure that we’re able to put together that best end product with as little effort and input honestly from them as possible because they have, they have other things to be doing, practically. Farmers need to be out on the farm. And we certainly appreciate and respect all the inputs they put in to providing that information. We just want to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for them to continue doing that.

Terry Gerton I’m curious, there’s a wide variety in the agricultural sector, everything from family farms to big industrial farms and food production sites. Did you hear different concerns based on kind of the size of the operation? The big companies who are running big operations have more capacity to respond to these kinds data collections than an individual farmer on his own spot?

Lauren Stump You know, not necessarily. I don’t think we really saw divisions like that based off just, you know, so much on the size of farms. I think practically there are a lot of considerations, of course. We heard a lot from farmers who might have, you know smaller operations, some that might have larger operations, but I think it really comes down to whether or not they have the type of equipment that could generate, machine data about sharing information versus information that might prevent them from wanting to respond to a survey. It really came down to a personal preference on more so on who would eagerly share that information and who would not. So you kind of have to consider the individual producer. It really wasn’t separated based on large or small firm and the conversations that we have, but I think like I said, we’re continuing to listen to everybody and are really eager to hear from farmers as we go through this process to make sure that we are adapting to their needs and continuing to hear from folks as we go through the data modernization process. So we’re still having all those conversations with the public today and would look forward to hearing from more people as well. But we want to make sure across all different groups of farmers, whether they’re large, whether they are small and beginning farmers, that is such an important group out there, you have to have a way to those folks and make sure that we’re able to incorporate that information that they want to provide.

Terry Gerton Dr. Lauren Stump is the deputy undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research, education, and economics mission area. Dr. Stump, as you were describing earlier the kinds of data that USDA wants to collect, it includes administrative data, satellite imagery, geospatial tools, artificial intelligence. A lot of times when we hear about collection of those kinds of data, we also hear privacy concerns. Any issues about how USDA plans to use that kind of data related to privacy, competitive advantage, different choices for different farmers and ranchers?

Lauren Stump Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is all part of that conversation of taking the time to hear from all producers on their concerns on the privacy front if they have them and what information they think is appropriate for USDA. I’ll take a side note to mention that the National Ag Statistics Service, of course, is bound to CPSIA, so the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act. That ensures very strong confidentiality protections, and that’s for federal agencies that are collecting information exclusively for statistical purposes. So the National Ag Statistics Service has to abide by that law, of course, and they take privacy and they take that very, very seriously. So when we’re looking at the greater use of administrative data, so sharing information across the USDA. That is making sure that we’re decreasing that burden, decreasing the number of touch points that producers have to input information into USDA for different purposes. When it comes to increasing the use of satellite imagery or geospatial tools, a lot of times, you know, that’s not going to be something where it’s specific to a particular producer or individual AI machine learning, but absolutely we have to think through and be very, very careful about any particular privacy concerns that there may be. And we have heard from producers who want to make sure that their privacy is protected throughout all of this and are taking that really, really seriously as we work through this as well. So we’re still having conversations with everyone in the public today. I had another meeting just the other day with a group on data modernization who raised, you know, their input for this, and so I want everyone to know that the window of opportunity has not closed, so you can come and tell us what you think if you are a farmer out there who wants to weigh in on the data modernization plan.

Terry Gerton That is great to know that the window is still open and I wanna take a little tangent to privacy and that’s around trust. When you’ve had a data collection system, a data collecting and reporting system that’s been in place for a long time, people are used to that, people know how it works, know how to read it. When you switch to a new data system, sometimes people are a little leery about the validity of it. Is USDA taking this as a pilot approach to test and report and build that kind of trust or are you hearing that there aren’t any concerns in that process?

Lauren Stump No, absolutely. That is something that we hear a lot, and I think we know that farmers and the public have the expectation that what they receive from USDA in terms of the information that’s reported out at the end of this process is going to be, bare minimum, just as good as and really needs to be better than the information they’re getting now. So we are going to transparent about what we’re doing and when. There’ll be opportunities for feedback on the process and how NASS might be modernizing and how USDA might be modernizing its infrastructure. And absolutely looking at any of the new technologies or methodologies that we’re thinking through, those are going to be tested out, piloted, run in parallel to the current processes to make sure to validate that what we receive is going to provide a better end product. So all of this is very iterative. Nothing is final and we are doing this to support farmers and ranchers, which means being upfront about it and clearly communicating what we’re doing. So we’ve got to make sure this is based on the adaptation and methodologies and all reports will be statistically accurate and more accurate than they are today, rooted in science and statistical integrity.

Terry Gerton And if people have comments that they want to submit to you, where do they go?

Lauren Stump Datamodernization@usda.gov.