After a six-week halt of USDA reports due to the government shutdown, catch-up in report release is occurring and will continue to occur in December. Lance Honig of the National Agricultural Statistics Service noted plans were in place in early November for report release in the event of the federal government reopening. One of those, a major Agriculture Department offering, was issued the day after reopening.
“We did get the crop production report out on the 14th. It would have come just a few days earlier, so very short delay there. And so, some things are very quickly getting back on schedule,” he said. That included reports released the Friday before Thanksgiving—reports that originally had an Oct. 1 issue date—things like grain crushing or cotton system, fats and oils. That work was virtually complete when the shutdown started, joining on that date the regularly scheduled November Cattle on Feed report.
Other reports need additional time to assimilate data and prepare presentation. For instance, some offerings, such as the October and November agricultural prices reports, are now scheduled for Dec. 15, while December’s ag prices offering comes out Dec. 31, or the end-of-month release regularly slotted for ag prices.
What about release dates for some larger reports—things like TOTA or the Census of Horticultural Specialties—projects that are extremely large and heavily impacted by a six-week gap?
“We still don’t know exactly when we’re going to be able to catch all of that work up, because not only do we need to capture everything that we missed during those six weeks, but we’ve also got everything happening right now that would have been happening right now as well. And so, a lot of moving parts,” he said.
In some cases, reports not issued during the government shutdown will not be revisited or released.
“Some examples that come to mind for me are some of the weekly progress information. You really can’t go back in time and go back to folks and say, ‘Hey, as of the second Sunday in October, what do you think the condition ratings were? What do you think harvest progress was?’ It’s just physically not possible to recapture that information.”
A complete list of NASS’ revised report schedule is available online at www.nass.usda.gov.