Thank you for your message regarding the NASS agricultural chemical use data collection program. USDA and the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) are committed to providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture. However, limited resources – combined with escalating survey expenses, increasing staff costs – have eroded NASS’s annual survey budget over the last decade. This resulted in necessary adjustments to NASS programs, including a decision to collect chemical use data on a rotational basis.

In fiscal years (FY) 2004 through 2006, NASS received appropriated funding from Congress to support existing programs. Some of these funds were used to continue the rotation pattern for chemical use statistics. However, additional program reductions were necessary to ensure high quality statistics were being produced for all reports published by NASS.

NASS reviewed and prioritized its entire data collection program based on the following criteria:
· Principal Economic Indicator data;
· Data that directly impact the market;
· Data necessary to implement USDA programs that provide payments to farmers and are used to administer the farm safety net for producers; and
· Data for which there are no other sources of information available.

Based on the need to redirect funds in accordance with the priority listing above, the decision was made to further curtail the NASS chemical use program beginning in FY 2007. Current funding will only allow a very limited number of commodities to be surveyed each year. Current plans are to be able to collect data for specific crops every 5 or 6 years. Many other commodities will be much less frequent.

NASS will not conduct any agricultural chemical usage surveys on crops produced in 2008. However, under a cooperative agreement with Economic Research Service NASS plans to collect wheat nutrient and pesticide data as part of the 2009 Agricultural Resource Management Survey and plans to publish this data in May 2010.

NASS is committed to working with the agricultural community to identify funding sources and in the absence of increased funding, set commodity rotation priorities for future limited surveys.

Marlene Diehl