Change Request

Change Request, Agricultural Surveys, OMB No. 0535-0213

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is submitting this non-substantive change request for the Cattle on Feed Survey (OMB Control Number 0535-0213) to address a couple of minor changes to this program.

Currently NASS conducts this survey as a census of all operations with greater than 1,000 head of cattle on feed at any time. We would like to include a sampling of operations with fewer than 1,000 head of cattle. This small change would help to strengthen the accuracy of our estimates, since approximately 18% of the U.S. cattle on feed are held on operations with fewer than 1,000 head.

Several questions that are currently asked of the operations with 1,000 or more head of cattle will be removed from the questionnaires sent to operations with fewer than 1,000 head. We will be able to scale this data for the smaller operations from the annual cattle production survey conducted in January of each year and is included in this same docket. Two new questions will be added to the questionnaires sent to the operations with less than 1,000 head. Questions numbered 1 and 4 of the attached questionnaire will be used as reference points for the farmers, so that they only report data for the cattle on feed and exclude any cattle on their operations that are used for breeding or dairy operations.

The adjusted sample size will increase by an average of 2,300 operations being surveyed each month. This will increase the respondent burden by an estimated 6,000 hours or approximately a 3% increase in total annual burden for this docket.

These changes are not expected to bias any of the data due to non-response, since NASS will continue to use the same modes of data collection we are currently using. NASS expects to maintain a response rate of approximately 85% after these changes are implemented.