USDA officials said that if the money became available, they would restore a handful of crop and livestock reports that were discontinued in April because of a funding gap. “We have heard from our data users how valuable this information is,” said Troy Joshua, executive producer for the Agricultural Statistics Board, on Wednesday.
The reports would cost $7.5 million or perhaps $8 million to revive, said Joshua and Lance Honig, who chairs the Agricultural Statistics Board, part of the USDA’s statistical reporting agency. The most expensive reports, at some $7 million, would be county-level crop and livestock estimates. The midsummer cattle inventory report costs about $550,000 to produce. The officials did not have a figure for the cotton objective yield report, which was also discontinued, but said it would cost roughly half a million dollars.
Honig said the cuts had been unavoidable because Congress was months later than usual in completing the appropriations process this year and allotted less money than expected for the National Agricultural Statistics Service. “You combine that with increasing costs and an implemented pay increase, and so we had a significant budget … gap that we needed to account for.” Officials pared expenses as much as they could but could not avoid eliminating the reports, he said.
During a webinar, Honig and Joshua pointed to other USDA reports that provide material that was part of the discontinued reports.