Justification for Non-substanve Change Request

Justification for Non-substantive Change Request

Change Request, Prices Paid for: Farm Machinery; Feed; Fertilizer and Agricultural Chemicals; Fuels; and Seed. OMB No. 0535-0003.

In the previous submission we received Terms of Clearance for this docket due to low response rates for some of the surveys conducted under this approval. This docket is set to expire on December 31, 2009

NASS is submitting this non-substantive change request for the Prices Paid surveys. There are five surveys covered in this group: Prices Paid for Farm Machinery; Prices Paid for Feed; Price Paid for Fertilizer and Agricultural Chemicals; Prices Paid for Fuels; and Prices Paid for Seed. The population consists of agribusinesses. Some of these businesses have been in the sample for numerous years, which we feel contributes to the low response rates. Plans are to conduct a screening survey this fall to refresh the sampled population. The new sample will be used for collection of prices paid data beginning in March 2010.

The proposed screening questionnaire consists of simple YES/NO questions that will be used to identify operations selling commodities of interest to farmers. We will also include questions to confirm or correct their address and business contacts (book keepers, accountants, managers, etc.) as well to determine whether or not they are a co-op or independent operation. Some co-ops use a centralized book keeper and report for multiple locations. This information will be used to increase the efficiency of our data collection efforts.

The targeted sample consists of approximately 27,000 businesses. These sampled records will be contacted by mail, with phone follow-up for non-response. Each questionnaire averages 5 minutes to complete. With an 80% response rate, the additional burden calculated for this ICR is 1,980 hours.