AgSCAPE
AgSCAPE is a State and County Agricultural Population Estimates product that is exclusively available from FarmEcon.Com. This product consists of system for estimating major agricultural production statistics for all counties and states (except Alaska) in the U.S. While AgSCAPE is based on the 2002 USDA Agricultural Census, it is updated annually and contains estimates for all counties affected by USDA "Disclosure" issues.
AgSCAPE is also capable of producing estimates for the operation size categories in the 2002 Census. That is, the process can not only produce totals for a county, but also yield information on the size of the producers in the county. The same technique for eliminating disclosure issues for county totals is also used for the size categories.
In addition, all AgSCAPE data tables contain U.S. FIPS codes that are used by most Geographical Information System (GIS) programs employed for mapping data.
Why AgSCAPE? The Agricultural Census contains a wealth of county level detail on U.S. agriculture. However, the most current Census is for 2002, 3 years old, and within the data there are thousands of missing county estimates. The missing data is due to USDA policy on disclosure of information that could be used to identify an individual producer's production level of a commodity.
Disclosure Issue Example: In the 2002 Census there are 386 counties where there is missing data on the number of fed cattle sold. Those counties contain 5,798 farms that sold fed cattle in 2002. AgSCAPE offers current, not 2003, estimates of the number of fed cattle sold for all counties, including those 386 affected by disclosure issues for feedlots.
The AgSCAPE process uses USDA's latest annual state level estimates to update the 2002 Census county data. Each state's current data is prorated by county to obtain more current county estimates and estimates for counties with disclosure issues are added. Thus, the current database contains estimates for all U.S. counties for 2005.
What is AgSCAPE used for? AgSCAPE is useful for sales force sizing and deployment, new product planning and sales forecasting, input to GIS mapping, and any other agricultural sales or marketing task involving detailed data on the current geography of major agricultural products produced by U.S. farms.
Availability: AgSCAPE is currently available in Excel format for 2002 through 2005 for all major crops, livestock and poultry categories covered in the 2002 Agricultural Census. See the AgSCAPE Categories page for categories currently available.
Disclaimer: AgSCAPE uses mathematical techniques to estimate missing data. As such it is subject to the limitations of the techniques used.