Agricultural Price Program Update - April 2015

United States Department of Agriculture
National Agricultural Statistics Service

1400 Independence Ave. S.W.
Washington D.C. 20250
(202) 690 - 3223
www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Prices/index.asp

Agricultural Price Program Update
April 2015

2015
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NASS Price Program Mission, Vision, and Goal
Mission Statement: The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) price program provides relevant, timely,
accurate and useful statistics for use in evaluating the economic condition of the United States agricultural economy.
Vision Statement: NASS strives to be a premier provider of relevant, high quality, and useful agricultural price
data, consistent with other United States Federal and international statistical programs.
Goal: The objective of the price program for indexes is to measure the general level of price change farmers pay for
agricultural inputs and the general level of price change farmers receive for commodities sold.

Overview of Program Modifications
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Price
Program Team (PPT), with NASS’s Senior Executive
Team approval, completed a comprehensive review of
the Council on Food, Agricultural and Resource
Economics (C-FARE) recommendations. In addition,
the PPT team considered the impact of modern
technological advances occurring in agricultural
production and developed plans to implement
necessary program improvements. The January 2014
price program modifications included updating the
base reference period, revising the group structure,
increasing commodity coverage, updating monthly
market share weights, and normalizing weights. The
January 2015 price program update eliminated
estimation and publication of preliminary monthly
prices and the construction of annual commodity group
indexes. Based on the review of the C-FARE
recommendations and the price program the following
modifications will be implemented in April 2015.


Discontinue publication of the annual March
survey prices paid data

Prices Paid Annual Survey Data
Historically NASS’s price program has published
Annual Survey price data. These data include prices

paid and value of hatchery production for poultry,
and prices paid for agricultural chemicals, farm
machinery, feed, fertilizer, fuels, and plant
materials.
Departmental and Agency standardization initiatives
impacting the price program continue to address survey
inconsistencies in collecting agricultural commodity
price data. Additional review of the price program
included seeking data user applications and needs of
price data. Data users cited the challenges and lack of
current trends in the value of prices paid price data.
The major mission of NASS’ Prices Paid by producers
for farm inputs is in measuring the general level of
price change at the production input group level. As the
products used by producers are continually changing, it
is a never ending challenge to keep abreast of the new
technology to provide accurate and timely item level
prices. The index groupings provided reflect the
general level of price change for common input items
collectively.
Based on the results of the price program review, the
PPT team is evaluating and making changes to better
serve NASS’ mission of providing relevant, timely,
and useful statistics. NASS will discontinue publishing
annual survey prices paid data. This program change
will be implemented with the April 2015 Agricultural
Price report.