The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has announced it is canceling the July Cattle report and discontinuing the Cotton Objective Yield Survey, as well as all County Estimates for Crops and Livestock beginning with the 2024 production year.
The agency said in making the announcement that the decision to discontinue these surveys and reports was not made lightly, but was necessary, given appropriated budget levels.
The announcement prompted a fairly immediate response from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). The cattle industry group was critical of the decision to cancel the July Cattle Report and discontinue the County Estimates for Crops and Livestock, among other changes. These reports provide critical data and the decision to end them is completely misguided, said NCBA.
“It is disingenuous for the same agency which touts its commitment to transparency in livestock markets to arbitrarily cease publication of reports which provide just that. While it may be politically expedient to blame appropriators in Congress for today’s decision, cattle producers know better than to believe discontinuing a handful of reports will result in substantive cost savings for the Department,” said NCBA Vice President of Government Affairs Ethan Lane. “NCBA calls on USDA-NASS to immediately reverse this decision and continue delivering on its stated mission of providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.”

NASS said it has and will continue to review its estimating programs using criteria focused on the needs of its mission and customers to prioritize budget decisions. Information about all NASS surveys and reports is available online at www.nass.usda.gov.