State-Federal Agreement Will Provide Timely Crop Estimates For Texas Agriculture (6/15/2016)

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller announced a new cooperative agreement between the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Services (USDA-NASS) to provide in-season district-level estimates on acreage, yield and production for Texas wheat, corn, cotton and sorghum crops. The agreement was signed at TDA’s Austin headquarters by Commissioner Miller and USDA-NASS Southern Plains Regional Field Office Director Wilbert Hundl, Jr.

“This partnership is an important step forward in providing timely and accurate statistics to agricultural interests throughout Texas, including groups like Plains Cotton Growers,” Commissioner Miller said. “I am very appreciative to Plains Cotton Growers for facilitating meetings between the Texas Department of Agriculture and directors of the USDA agricultural statistics Texas field office. These meetings ultimately lead to the creation of this new agreement, and I couldn’t be more pleased to see this partnership come to life.”

The terms of the agreement stipulate that USDA-NASS wheat, corn, cotton and sorghum estimates will be provided for each crop when it is in season. These estimates are used throughout the agriculture industry for resource management planning, transport decisions and marketing strategies. The availability of in-season reporting is highly advantageous to Texas agricultural producers as it strengthens the reliability and availability of current crop data and trends. The electronic report will be posted to the Texas and Oklahoma USDA-NASS websites and provided to TDA as part of a monthly Crop Production Report.

“Texas is a large and diverse agricultural state,” Johnie Reed, president of Plains Cotton Growers, Inc. said. “The ability to obtain district and county wide information derived from state data through this cooperative agreement is important to the agriculture industry. It provides the agriculture industry with more accurate information on planted and harvested acres, in addition to production and yield, which in many instances is utilized in federal farm programs and marketing and decision aid tools for producers. Plains Cotton Growers greatly appreciates this effort by TDA and USDA-NASS.”