Non-substantive Change Request for Onions and Sweet Potatoes

Non-Substantive Change Request

Vegetable Grower Inquiry (0535-0037)

The Vegetable Grower Inquiry is conducted at the end of the year. Most vegetables have been sold for either the fresh market or processing market by this time. Only two of the root crops (onions and sweet potatoes) can be stored for a prolonged period of time. After conducting some cognitive testing, it was discovered that there was some discrepancy in how farm operators were reporting unsold inventory for these two crops. Some operators were reporting them as unsold, while some were including them in the intended marketing channel (fresh market vs. processing market), and some were not including them at all.

Starting in 2020, NASS will begin to expand the Vegetable Grower Inquiry to add two extra categories for the respondent to report their production and intended sales for onions and sweet potatoes. In addition, NASS will include questions for the previous year to finalize the price data for the onions and sweet potatoes that were in storage at the end of the year.

The following changes will be made to the 2020 questionnaire:

On Page 1, Instructions – Descriptions for fresh market and processing were added, FOB or Freight On Board is better defined, and the exclude statement for greenhouse production was moved to page 1, question 1:

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Report for all land operated, including land rented from others, in Utah.

• Report for all seasons (winter, spring, summer, and fall) during 2020.

• Fresh Market and Processing Descriptions:

• Processing refers to processes that alter the general state of the commodity, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, milling, grinding, pasteurization, pickling, juicing, or slicing. The Processing Price should be the total dollars received or average price per unit sold should reflect all payments to growers plus the costs of materials and services provided by processors to get the raw commodity to the plant receiving door.

• Fresh Market refers to utilized production that is not processed. The Fresh Market Price should be the total dollars received or average price per unit sold should reflect an F.O.B. (Freight On Board) shipping point price, or equivalent, for all grades and qualities sold for fresh market. The F.O.B. shipping point is a point of first sale. Equivalent points of first sale include farm, roadside, farmer's market, grower auction, and U-pick sales. Adjust sales at wholesale terminal markets for freight, brokerage, and commission charge paid by the grower.

For Screener, Page 1, Question 2:

Original question: “How many acres of vegetables, melons, and herbs were planted for harvest in [State] in 2020?

Change: “How many acres of vegetables, melons, and herbs were planted for harvest in [State] on your operation in 2020?

For Onions (Dry) and Sweet Potato Sections, we replicated the acreage, production, disposition, and income table/questions to collect both current and previous crop year data.  So for example, the vegetable inquiry going to potato growers in November this year, will now have 2020 AND 2019 tables/questions.

For all commodities, we modified tabulated question 3 in the following ways:

1. Deleted “sold” in “Quantity Sold” for the column 1 header

2. Added “or seed” to the row for “Sold for Fresh Market or seed”.

3. Deleted “commercial” from row for “Sold for Commercial Processing”.

4. Replaced the description of processing with an instruction to “(see page 1 for description)”.

In 2020, for Sweet Potato Section, we modified tabulated question 3 in the following ways:

5. Added two rows with the following headers/descriptions “Stored to be sold for fresh market,” and “Stored to be sold for processing” (they became d and e respectively).  Moving the final “harvested, but not sold…” row to f.  We did not add any rows to the previous crop year tabulated questions.

In 2021 for Onions (Dry) Section, we modified tabulated question 3 in the same way as was done with Sweet Potatoes in 2020:

5. Added two rows with the following headers/descriptions “Stored to be sold for fresh market,” and “Stored to be sold for processing” (they became d and e respectively).  Moving the final “harvested, but not sold…” row to f.  We did not add any rows to the previous crop year tabulated questions.

In 2020 for the Sweet Potato Section, we added a question asking respondents the following:

• Did you report your answers in cured weight or green weight? [_] Cured Weight      [_] Green Weight

The attached questionnaire titled, 0037 - Vegetable Grower Survey - End of Season -Master Version - Rev Aug 2020 contains the questions for Sweet Potatoes and Onions, as they will appear in 2020.

The attached questionnaire titled, 0037 - Vegetable Grower Survey - End of Season -Single State Version - Rev Aug 2020 has the correct wording that will be used in 2021.

These changes will affect primarily only the growers of onions and sweet potatoes. We have added 5 minutes to the burden time on the Vegetable Grower Inquiry questionnaire so it is now 25 minutes to complete. However, our Sampling Section has adjusted the sample size to 11,000 for 2020. The overall number of responses will be less than the original approval by 3,400 operations. This will result in a decrease in burden by 281 hours.