United States Department of Agriculture

Issued Dec. 6, 2018 by the Agricultural Statistics Board of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's, National Agricultural Statistics Service. For more information, contact Lance Honig at (202) 720-2127 or lance.honig@usda.gov.

Because of the increasing importance of county level crop statistics, NASS is considering eliminating the publication of Agricultural Statistics District (ASD) level estimates for annual crop county estimates. Some county level estimates do not meet publication standards and must be withheld from publication. In order to maintain the confidentiality of these counties, at least one additional county within the same ASD must also be suppressed. Sometimes this results in the suppression of county level estimates that would otherwise qualify for publication. Without the need for ASD level publication, any other county within the state could be used to provide the complementary coverage, ultimately leading to more counties published within each state. This change would align the publishing approach for the Census of Agriculture and the annual county estimates programs.

Although there are clear benefits to removing the ASD level estimates, we realize that we may not be aware of specific uses that may exist. To provide comments or other information on this topic, please e-mail input by Jan. 6, 2019 to nass@nass.usda.gov with COUNTY ESTIMATES COMMENTS as the subject line.