USDA crop acreage reporting is finally entering the modern era, starting with a new pilot program for spring-planted crops.
“Transformative” is how Undersecretary for Farm Production Richard Fordyce describes it.
“Better customer service to farmers that annually come in and do an acreage report. It’s going to be, I think, more accurate, more representative of what’s actually happening on that farm.”
….Fordyce says that’s by finally moving into the digital age.
“We’re moving away from the photocopied paper maps that we’ve been doing for far too long and moving more into the digital platform that is representative of what is happening on that farm today.”
Fordyce says the pilot program starts in county offices in a dozen states for reporting spring-planted acreage by the July 15 deadline.
“They’ll have an opportunity to look at their farm. Does that geospatial map represent how they’re farming a particular field? It’ll give them the opportunity to adjust that and to make changes if that map is not 100 percent representative of what they’re doing.”
….And, Fordyce says, do so in detail.
“You tap on that field, and it’ll give you an opportunity to select, through a crop code, what the crop is, then immediately, a calendar will pop up. You’ll tap on that calendar to represent the planting date. And then, once that’s done, that data is entered.”
Ending the need to pass a paper map over to a program analyst to enter the data. The data will already be in the system.
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