Land Core Submits Comments to USDA NASS for 2027 Census of Agriculture
Image Credit: Sveta Fedarava, Unsplash
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Services (NASS) recently solicited input on the content and questions for the 2027 Census of Agriculture.
Land Core submitted comments and recommendations, building on the organization’s leadership around the importance of soil health practices and their ability to provide subsequent risk reduction, economic, and environmental benefits.
Below, is an abbreviated selection of our comments.
Overview
The Census of Agriculture plays a crucial role in gathering valuable information from and about agricultural stakeholders. We are grateful to be able to suggest questions to be potentially implemented into the 2027 survey to better understand U.S. farms and ranches and the people who operate them.
Soil health practices are becoming ubiquitous across the U.S. in almost every cropping system at all scales. Currently, the Census of Agriculture captures the acreage of cover crops and reduced tillage; however, these data alone do not fully encapsulate soil health promoting practices and the subsequent risk reduction, economic, and environmental benefits. Without a more complete picture of soil health practices in the U.S., USDA cannot fully support the vast majority of farmers and ranchers who are using these practices.
What Data Are Needed?
Land Core has proposed two key practices and systems for the Department of Agriculture to consider incorporating into the 2027 Census to more effectively capture land use and practices vital to the framework of U.S. agriculture. The practices we suggest to incorporate into the survey are (A) crop rotation and (B) integrative crop-livestock systems (ICLS) practices.
Regarding the practice of crop rotation, to accurately capture its impact, the following data points are needed: (i) acreage, (ii) location (field-level scale adoption, ideally including field boundaries and/or center-of-field GPS coordinates), (iii) what types of crops are used in the practice, and (iv) number of years the practices has been implemented.
As for integrative crop-livestock systems (ICLS) practices, the following data are important to capture: (i) acreage (ii) land use (iii) manure applications (iv) frequency and timeline of rotating within the system (from cropland to pasture land). [Read more in the full comments.]
Suggested Data Questions
Suggested questions associated with crop rotation are drafted as follows: 1) Report acres of cropland that uses crop rotation practices; 2) During 2027, considering the total acres on this operation, how many acres were crop rotation practices used?; 3) Were any field crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, etc, harvested from this land where crop rotation was in practice in 2027?; 4) Report field crop names for all crops, harvested from cropland where crop rotation was implemented, from this operation in 2027.
Suggested questions associated with integrative crop-livestock systems (ICLS) are drafted as follows: 1) Report acres of cropland that was grazed upon by livestock; 2) Report acres of land where manure from the operation’s livestock was used on cropland. [Read more in the full comments.]
At What Level is the Information Needed?
For both crop rotation and the ICLS practices, the ideal geographic level for data collection to occur would be at the field level. More field-level data, especially on soil health practice adoption, are essential to support a wide range of public- and private-sector research projects. For example, field-level data can help researchers verify mapping, measurement and modeling efforts that use remotely-sensed imaging, predictive modeling or machine learning approaches.
Who Will Use the Information?
Beyond conservation stakeholders, the crop insurance sector, i.e., the USDA’s Risk Management Agency, will be able to use this data to make well-informed, evidence-based decisions that are tailored to the appropriate level of operations. Furthermore, the data collected from the suggested topics will contribute to NASS’ goal to foster interoperability and use of the data between/across agencies. We encourage NASS to work closely with RMA and FSA as questions are drafted. [Read more in the full comments.]