Recent staffing losses, budget shortfalls in purchasing power, and data cancellations will compromise the US Department of Agriculture’s capacity and capability to provide official statistics to track and monitor the US agricultural economy.
The consequences will worsen data quality and the supply of many products. But decisions still need to be made, and the vacuum will be filled using incomplete databases that will be poor substitutes for federal sources they replace. Additionally, government policymakers will have no oversight of the access and accountability of these data.
The opportunity is at hand to meet the future and design a sustainable direction to produce data and statistics that can inform policies and programs in the US agricultural economy.