Market News & Headlines >> FSA Reviewing Acreage Report Snafu

USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) is reviewing its procedures after posting incorrect certified crop acreage data online early on Wednesday. The FSA inadvertently issued the wrong data on crop acreage around 5 a.m. CT and later posted corrected data around 9:00 a.m. CT.

The agency is investigating why the error occurred and reviewing procedures "to make certain there are checks to avoid any future errors of this sort," FSA spokesman Kent Politsch told Reuters News Service.

The erroneous FSA data showed a strong jump in planted/failed corn and soybean acres enrolled in U.S. crop subsidy programs compared with FSA data from August and also showed significantly lower prevented plantings. The data appeared to consist mostly of final FSA planting totals from 2014, rather than fresh 2015 numbers.

USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service is due to start considering FSA acreage data when calculating its own acreage estimates for the October Crop Production Report. Lance Honig, chief of the crops branch for NASS, told Reuters he feels "every bit as confident in the FSA data as I did before today.... They took very quick action to correct it."

The corrected FSA numbers showed total planted/failed corn acres enrolled in government crop subsidy programs at 84.289 million acres versus the 83.147 million reported in August. Certified planted/failed soybean acres were pegged at 80.688 million, up from 79.478 million in August.

FSA reported prevented corn plantings of 2.352 mil. acres, up slightly from 2.301 million in August and put prevented soybean plantings at a record high 2.219 million acres, up from 2.173 million in August.

Wheat producers had enrolled 52.223 mil. acres of wheat in U.S. crop subsidy programs for 2015 as of Sept. 3, up 492,000 from the August total of 51.731 million. That included roughly 1.16 mil. failed acres.  Wheat prevent plant acres totaled 695,509, up marginally from roughly 693,000 in August.

Certified prevented plantings for all U.S. crops totaled 6.953 million acres as of Sept. 3, up from an August total of 6.449 million acres and up from 4.371 million acres last year.