Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 10/3/18

The department's statistics don't accurately reflect today's agriculture sector, and it should reorganize data collection methods to account for the rise of mega-farms, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended in a new report.

USDA annually collects varied data on U.S. farms, which is used to inform policies on the environment, biodiversity, food security and population health. But the current method still portrays farms as "self-contained, family-operated businesses," and isn't equipped to handle the growing complexity of the farming industry, the report argues.

A lot has changed: Small farms accounted for 40 percent of all production in 1996, but they've come to be overshadowed by large, industrial farms, which now account for more than half of all production.

What the National Academies want: The group says USDA should do more to tease out the differences between smaller family farms and industrial mega-farms by creating a Farm Register. The proposed register should designate smaller farms as "farm establishments" and larger ones as "farm businesses," and it should be continually updated. The report also recommends that research agencies rely less on non-survey data sources to increase accuracy and decrease the burden on farmers to respond.

One more nugget from the report: Only 80 percent of farmers answer the mandatory Census of Agriculture. The response rate for other surveys is much lower, a reality that could affect a study's findings. Farmers complain the surveys take too much time, are too long, or sometimes ask questions that are difficult to answer accurately. Large, industrial farms are less likely to complete surveys.