COLUMBUS, Ohio — The federal government will survey farmers throughout Ohio in an attempt to learn more about their financial well-being.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will gather information about farm economics and production practices from farmers and ranchers across Ohio. The department said it is conducting the third and final phase of the 2022 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).
Spectrum News agriculture expert Andy Vance said the department includes a “robust staff of economists.”
“[It is] measuring the financial well-being of the nation’s farms and ranches, so they’ll send this survey out and ask farmers, landowners, principal operators, a variety of questions about their current income situation on farm income, off farm income, household income,” Vance said. “They’ll ask things like, ‘Did costs go up this year? What did profits look like?’…They’ll also ask things about debt.”
Vance said the purpose of the survey is to provide policy-makers and the industry an idea of the financial health and well-being of the nation’s food production system. He said the department will survey a representative sample of small, midsize, and large farmers. He said there is also a variety of different demographic categories in terms of operation size, number of acres, and number of dollars produced.
The USDA said it will protect the confidentiality of all farmers who respond to its surveys. The department said it will only publish data in an aggregate form in an attempt to ensure the confidentiality of all responses and that no individual respondent or operation can be identified.
The data will be published in the annual Farm Production Expenditures report in July 2023.
