National Milk Producers Federation

USDA Issues Mandatory Electronic Dairy Product Price Reporting Rule - February 15, 2012

USDA issued the final rule for the mandatory electronic dairy product price reporting, which appeared in the Federal Register.

The rule was mostly unchanged from the proposed rule issued last July, and did several things that NMPF had supported:

• It completed the move of dairy product price reporting from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). AMS staff were more familiar with the reporting plants and their operations, and so were better equipped to integrate data collection and audit.
• It made reporting completely web-based, which would speed the data collection process.
• It moved up the plant reporting deadline each week from noon (local time) on Wednesday to noon (local time) on Tuesday, with some adjustments for when Monday or Tuesday fell on a holiday.
• It moved up USDA’s normal publication deadline each week from 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday to 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, again with possible adjustment for holidays.
• Beginning April 18, Federal order price announcements would also move from Friday to 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, allowing about 40% of Class price announcements to be based on more current data than they were before.
  

The last Dairy Product Prices report will be issued by NASS for the last time on Friday, March 30. The following week, on Wednesday, April 4, it will be issued by AMS for the first time.

New product price reporting and announcement schedules and information about the new data collection system were posted on the AMS website.

NASS Reinstates Dairy Reports After NMPF Request - December 16, 2011

In October 2011, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) announced that it would cut a number of its statistical reports in anticipation of substantial budget cuts from Congress. In November, Congress voted to give NASS $6 million more than anticipated, and directed the agency to re-evaluate the reports that had been cut. NMPF wrote to Cynthia Clark, NASS’ Administrator on November 29, requesting that she restore the July Cattle report and the annual table containing the national breakdown of dairy farms by size.

On December 8, Dr. Clark wrote back to NMPF to inform us that both the July Cattle report and the Farms, Land in Farms, and Livestock Operations report – which contains the dairy farm size breakdown – would be restored to NASS’ publication schedule. The Cattle report, which is also published in January, provides the only comprehensive data on dairy heifers and cows. (This is the foundation for the monthly cow estimates in the Milk Production report.)

NMPF has also been in discussions with NASS about ensuring the accuracy of its reported alfalfa hay prices.

NMPF Urges USDA to Implement Mandatory Inventory Reporting Program - December 4, 2009

In a December 4, 2009 letter to Secretary Vilsack, NMPF reported that recent revisions to the USDA cheese stocks data had caused great concern that the market may have been artificially depressed by inaccurate data. This data came from an unaudited and voluntary survey, despite a decade-old statute calling for mandatory dairy product inventory reporting.

NMPF asked the Secretary to implement the mandatory inventory reporting program required by law.

Joint Letter with IDFA - October 10, 2007