Initiated back in late December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will be spending these next several months gathering information about farm economics and production practices from farmers and ranchers across the United States, as the agency conducts the third and final phase of the 2020 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).

“ARMS is the only survey that measures the current financial well-being of producers and their households as a whole,” said King Whetstone, director of the NASS Northeastern Region. “The results of this survey will help inform decisions on local and federal policies and programs that affect farms and farm families.”

In an effort to obtain the most accurate data, NASS will reach out to more than 30,000 producers nationwide, between January and April in 2021. The survey asks producers to provide in-depth information about their operating revenues, production costs, and household characteristics.

The 2020 ARMS survey includes a version of the questionnaire focused on hog and pig production costs and returns. This year the survey also includes questions to help measure any impacts of COVID-19 on farms, farm and household finances, and off-farm employment. “In February, our interviewers will begin reaching out to those farmers who have not yet responded,” said Whetstone. “We appreciate their time and are here to help them with the questionnaire so that their information will continue supporting sound agricultural decision making.”

In addition to producing accurate information, NASS has strong safeguards in place to protect the confidentiality of all farmers who respond to its surveys. The agency will only publish data in an aggregate form, ensuring the confidentiality of all responses and that no individual respondent or operation can be identified.

Growers can complete the survey online, saving you time by allowing you to skip over questions that do not apply to you, by calculating totals automatically, and by providing drop-down menus for common answers. It also saves taxpayer dollars that would otherwise be spent on return postage and data entry.

To complete your survey online, you will need your unique Survey Code from the address label on the paper questionnaire or letter you received in the mail. You can save a partially completed survey by clicking “Save and Return Later.” Do not click the “Submit” button until you are sure you are finished with your survey.

The expense data gathered in ARMS will be published in the annual Farm Production Expenditures report in July 2021. That report and others are available by clicking here. More reports based on ARMS data and more information about ARMS are available online here. For more information, please call the NASS Northeastern Regional Field Office at (800) 498-1518.

NASS is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about U.S. agriculture and is committed to providing timely, accurate and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.