Having good information is critical to agricultural operations, but increasing budget concerns are limiting the U.S. government’s ability to provide the information farmers want and need. Our friends at the Farm Foundation recently held a webinar organized by the Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (C-FARE), in partnership with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA), and Montana State University to address those issues brought on by what could become an information bottleneck.

“The importance of data is a really critical matter for us today,” said Farm Foundation President Neil Conklin, who served as moderator for the event. “Data remains as important as ever to public and private decision makers and to the smooth functioning of markets.”

Conklin was joined by Joseph J. Prusacki, Director, Statistics Division, USDA National Agricultural Statisics Service (NASS), who provided an overview of data uses, user groups and the impacts of budget cuts; Jim Robb of the Livestock Marketing Information Center, who talked about the challenges USDA faces in data collection; Paul Hughes of Nestle Purina PetCare, who provided a private sector perspective on data collection issues; and Mark Seetin of the U.S. Apple Association, who addressed producer groups’ concerns on the issue.

It’s some excellent information, and over the next few days, I’ll be giving you a closer look at what each one had to say. In the meantime, I’ll let you hear the entire hour-long webinar here:
Farm Foundation Webinar on Data Collection