By Ryan Hanrahan
Reuters’ Karl Plume and P.J. Huffstutter reported that “the U.S. Department of Agriculture is launching a pilot project that will rely more heavily on technology as part of a broader effort to improve its closely watched U.S. crop acreage and yield estimates, Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday, as the agency faces mounting criticism from farmers and traders over the reliability of government agricultural data.“
“Rollins discussed USDA’s data modernization plan at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, following a month-long series of listening ?sessions with farmers and agricultural groups,” Plume and Huffstutter reported. “‘We will conduct a pilot to evaluate the use of improved satellite imagery, working with NASA and ?other federal government agencies across the country to figure out how we can make this reporting more accurate,’ Rollins ?said during the farm conference.”
“Under the plan, the project will use geospatial tools and crop models alongside farmer polls to estimate crop acreage and ?yields. The department also said it would explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Plume and Huffstutter reported. “The announcement follows complaints about the reliability of department data ?from farmers, grain traders and economists after deep staff cuts and unprecedented increases between initial and final estimates of how many acres of corn U.S. farmers planted and harvested in 2025.”
“The data collection changes are intended to reduce the amount of information USDA repeatedly asks farmers to provide while improving the timeliness and accuracy of its statistics,” Plume and Huffstutter reported.
Source : illinois.edu