USDA Backlog Delays Census of Agriculture Release

Politico says the month-plus government shutdown has left U.S. Department of Agriculture officials with quite the backlog of commodity reports. They also have a lot of other numbers waiting to be crunched for future reports. Those numbers include the 2017 Census of Agriculture, which is a major survey taken every five years and includes every state and county. It shapes a lot of future national policy and rural programs. The National Ag Statistics Service announced this week that the survey results won’t be released on February 21st as originally scheduled. However, the agency didn’t announce a new release date. The first of many delayed reports came out on Thursday, which covered agricultural prices. Reports covering peanut stocks and poultry slaughter will come out on Friday. The Foreign Agricultural Service also laid out a new release schedule for its backlog of weekly export sales announcements. The FAS reports got a lot of attention in December as China began to once again make large purchases of U.S. soybeans after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reached a temporary truce at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.