Change Worksheet for Quarterly Ag Surveys

Change Request, To Include Cash Rent Questions on Three Existing Questionnaires, OMB No. 0535-0213

NASS is submitting this non-substantive change to request the use of cash rent questions currently approved for use on the June Area Survey (0535-0213) on three additional, quarterly surveys; the December Crops Stocks Survey, the January Cattle Inventory Survey and the January Sheep Survey (all of which are also covered under the same docket number 0535-0213). The recently passed Farm Bill requires the collection of data and publication of county level information for cash rents on an annual basis. Using these three existing surveys to collect this information will help reduce overall respondent burden as well as reduce the overall costs associated with the data collection effort.

The addition of these 6 questions on irrigated cropland, non-irrigated cropland and permanent pastureland (acres and cash rent per acre) is projected to add only minimal additional burden, since only operations that have cash rental expenses will need to answer these questions. Just over 52,500 operations or 38.6% of the total samples for at least one of the quarterly surveys listed above also reported “YES” to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, stating that they had cash rented acres in 2007.

In reviewing the table in item 12 of the Supporting Statement A, which was used to calculate total respondent burden, we originally used 3 minutes for each non-response; after looking at similar surveys we adjusted this to the standard 2 minutes per non-response. This resulted in a decrease of 2,031 hours. The addition of the cash rent questions onto the three existing questionnaires, added an additional 3,849 hours for a net increase of 1,818 hours of respondent burden to the overall docket.

The remainder of the operations that will be contacted for cash rent data will be addressed under OMB docket number 0535-0002, Field Crop Production.