USDA Conducting Yield Surveys Of Specific Farmers

As part of its data collection for the upcoming forecast for crop yields and production, the USDA is surveying roughly 20,000 producers across the country, asking what they expect their yields to be. But NASS' Lance Honig said if you're one of the 20,000 who got a survey form it wasn't a random thing where your name was pulled out of hat. Farmers, he noted, were carefully, scientifically selected.

"To ensure that we have adequate representation across all the different growing areas. Obviously there's more acres in certain places, so we're going to have heavier samples there. We need to make sure that we get more representation where there's more acres."

And get a good accurate picture regionally because, "conditions vary so much geographically across the country. This year is certainly no exception with some of the unusual weather that we've seen.

USDA will use the farmer survey plus satellite observations to put together its first survey-based crop production forecast to be released August 12th.

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