Ag News
USDA to survey fruit, cotton growers about chemical use
Posted on Sep 11, 2019 at 0:00 AM
The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will survey fruit growers in 11 states, including Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, for its biennial Fruit Chemical Use Survey. NASS will also gather information about farm economics and production practices from cotton producers across Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina as part of the 2019 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).
The Fruit Chemical Use Survey will collect information on bearing acreage, pest management practices, pesticide application, acres treated and rates applied for more than 12 fruit crops, and it will provide information about current crop production practices in the United States. The results of this survey will paint a detailed picture of pesticide use as well as other pest management practices used by the fruit growers across the nation.
Within the next few weeks, National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) enumerators will contact selected Florida, Georgia and South Carolina growers to arrange in-person interviews for conducting the survey.
For ARMS, NASS enumerators will conduct the survey of more than 600 cotton producers across the Southern Region, conducting in-person interviews starting in October. NASS recommends that farmers have their fertilizer and pesticide spray records available to speed up the survey process.
ARMS began in May with the first of three phases through April 2020. The first phase screened participants to make sure they had the commodity of interest and would accurately represent the entire U.S. farm sector. In the current phase, NASS will collect information on production practices and chemical use for the specific commodity mentioned above. In the final phase, NASS will survey producers on cost of production, farm income, and production expenditures.
ARMS is a joint effort of NASS and USDA’s Economic Research Service. For more information about the 2019 Agricultural Resource Management Survey visit www.nass.usda.gov/go/arms.
Survey results and all NASS reports are available online at www.nass.usda.gov/Publications. For more information call the NASS Southern Regional Field Office at (800) 253-4419.
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