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American farmers are ignoring US Department of Agriculture surveys in the latest sign of distrust in government data.

Reply rates for the USDA’s annual prospective planting report sank in March to a record low, with just over a third of 73,800 farm operations surveyed answering questions on the acres they will plant this spring of everything from corn and soybeans to tobacco and chickpeas. That compares with about 60% of farmers responding in 2018, with replies declining in each year since, to government records.

Farmers say they are wary of sharing data to inform reports they feel often work against them, especially with abundant harvests in recent years keeping crop prices under pressure.

The mounting skepticism comes as the USDA is looking to become more responsive to farmers through a transformation that relies heavily on shared data. It also echoes a broader loss of trust in government data, particularly as President Donald Trump has called into question federal statistics and information — from to voter tallies and even .

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Iowa farmer says the agency’s various surveys are too arduous and the markets often slump after the corresponding reports are released, affecting what they get paid for their crops.

“I don’t trust the data, I don’t trust the process, I don’t trust their people,” Riensche said. “And they monkey with my business.”

The trend may present complications for Trump’s efforts to court farmers, a key voting bloc for him and the Republican Party. He has repeatedly hosted farmers at the White House, unveiling a for them in December, then holding a ““— complete with a gold-colored tractor on the White House lawn — in March.

Intelligence from the farm is the lifeblood of the USDA’s reports, resulting in findings and forecasts that influence the direction of global crop prices and, ultimately, helps determine how much consumers pay for food.

But distrust of the USDA’s conclusions is creating a vicious circle, with the lack of contributions making the agency’s reports less accurate and in turn generating more farmer skepticism. That lack of accuracy also is resulting in more volatility in futures markets.

A case in point is the January crops report from the USDA, which when the agency unexpectedly boosted its estimate for the US corn crop by 1.6% to a record 17.021 billion bushels. Most had been anticipating a slight downward revision from the USDA’s previous forecast, and futures in Chicago subsequently posted their biggest daily decline in years.

While it was known that farmers shifted heavily toward corn during the growing season — particularly after China halted its purchases of American soybeans — the unexpected increase in supply blindsided many.

“When the USDA is that far off without much explanation, it creates distrust in future reports,” Darin LaBar, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat in Michigan, wrote to the USDA. He was one of 240 people who a request by the agency seeding feedback on ways to improve its data collection.

“You have to be able to trust the information that you’re given, and if you can’t even trust that, then why even do the report?” he said in an interview.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said after the January report that the agency wanted to ensure it wasn’t “driving price outcomes.” Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden also addressed the issue at the agency’s annual spring meeting with its data users.

“We understand that the data that we provide moves markets; we understand that it affects individual planning decisions by farmers and, therefore, we know that the data we provide needs to be correct,” he said.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service in an emailed statement said it is working to address declining response rates, and “remains committed to providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to American agriculture.”

Montana farmer said she has little faith in the reports because she knows producers — herself included — often fill them out while pressed for time and distracted by all their responsibilities on the farm. Few have time to sit down and pull out the spreadsheets and other records they need to give accurate answers, she said.

“If you’re in a hurry, you’re just trying to remember the numbers off the top of your head,” said Degn. “So I’ve always questioned the accuracy.”

Former USDA chief economist Seth Meyer is intimately familiar with the issues. He views the data the agency collects from farmers as the backbone of all the analysis and aid it provides for the agriculture sector. So when farmers don’t participate, he said, the data suffers and then farmers lose even more faith in the USDA’s findings.

“This isn’t the farmers’ fault, per se, but it also can’t be solved without them,” said Meyer, now director of the University of Missouri’s Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute. “The USDA has to go out and say, ‘Hey, there’s good reasons that you want to do this.'”

The information the agency solicits is used to, among other things, track crop plantings and harvests, and estimate domestic and global inventories and demand.

USDA Undersecretary sees a potential solution in the agency’s new “One Farmer, One File” initiative. The program is meant to streamline the way the USDA gets and internally shares the information on crops and farms it requires from growers looking to qualify for federal loans. Fordyce has been talking with colleagues about whether that information could be shared for survey purposes.

“We probably have some of that data,” Fordyce said. “We could probably help pre-populate survey responses.”

Stephen Nicholson, head of crops at agriculture lender Rabobank, worries that low participation is eroding the agency’s reputation as a gold standard of agricultural information.

“I don’t want to lose that standard,” Nicholson said, adding that he encourages farmers to fill out the surveys. “That gives the market better data, better information.”

Photo: Workers push carts with freshly picked chard at a farm in Leonardtown, Maryland. Photographer: Matt McClain/Bloomberg

Topics Trends Agribusiness