When agricultural economists look at the Outlook for U.S. Agricultural Trade – a quarterly report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture – they expect two parts: data tables and a written analysis explaining those numbers.
Both of those components have been part of the outlook for decades. But the most recent reports have only included the data, without written analysis.
That has some economists worried about transparency from the USDA, and the reports’ overall worth.
“It might be unfair of me to suggest that there’s any nefarious motive, but it would seem to me that it reduces the value of the information that is available to analysts of all kinds,” said Carlisle Ford Runge, professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota.
The USDA did not respond to questions from Harvest Public Media about why the analysis has been excluded from the reports, or if it would be restored in future versions.
In addition to economists, farmers, agricultural consultants, and commodity traders also use the outlooks to help inform planting and investment decisions.
The analysis first disappeared from the report published in May, which came out several days late.
Politico reported that Trump administration officials delayed the report, because the outlook forecasted an increase in the agricultural trade deficit. A spokesperson for the USDA told Politico that “the report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline.”
But when the next quarter’s report was published on Aug. 28, it didn’t include the written analysis, either.
Runge, the University of Minnesota economist, said excluding the written commentary makes the reports less useful.
“The narrative that accompanied the data was provided by analysts at the USDA, whose business it is to spend time and effort balancing and considering the information that’s coming across to them in ways that outsiders can’t and won’t typically do,” he said. “So the narrative analysis plays a critical role.”
Andrew Muhammad, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tennessee, wrote in Southern Ag Today that the “change has raised concerns about transparency and the loss of expert interpretation that helped make sense of complex trade dynamics.”
Muhammad previously worked for USDA’s Economic Research Service, which helps produce the quarterly outlook. He said he trusts the economists who work in the office, but it would be better for the reports to explain the rationale behind the numbers they present.
“The last thing we would want is just sort of everything coming out of USDA to just simply be [data] tables,” Muhammad said. “My hope would be at least that…there’s some type of write-up from this point forward.
Others in the field are less concerned, however. Luis Ribera, professor and director for the Center for North American Studies at Texas A&M University, said that it’s nice to have the written commentary, but economists like him can make sense of the numbers regardless.
“Is it that big of a deal? You know for me, not so much,” Ribera said. “The data is still there.”
Ribera would be concerned if he saw changes in the report’s methodology, or if he noticed dramatic shifts in its forecasts, but he hasn’t.
Emiliano Lopez Barrera, an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M, thinks the change is more of an inconvenience.
“I acknowledge the value added of the complimenting written portion,” Lopez Barrera said. “But personally for me, it’s not a huge harm.”
The next version of the report is due to be released on Nov. 25.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
