Concern is growing that the regular crop reports coming from the USDA are not accurate, and the Trump Administration is turning to a local man to help.
According to Hoosier Ag Today, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has tapped Kip Tom of Leesburg, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, to lead the effort to modernize the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
Rollins says NASS has relied on participation from farmers in reporting on their own farm’s progress, and that participation rate has dropped from nearly 90-percent to about 35-percent.
Tom says that’s just not good enough.
And the CEO of Tom Farms says the technology exists to produce better numbers, and accuracy of the numbers coming from NASS is critical to more than just farmers…
Tom added that food security is a national security issue.
