History
During the Civil War, USDA collected and distributed crop and livestock statistics to help farmers assess the value of the goods they produced. At that time, commodity buyers usually had more current and detailed market information than did farmers, a circumstance that often prevented farmers from getting a fair price for their goods. Producers in today's marketplace would be similarly handicapped were it not for the information provided by NASS.
The creation of USDA's Crop Reporting Board in 1905 (now called the Agricultural Statistics Board) was another landmark in the development of a nationwide statistical service for agriculture. A USDA reorganization in 1961 led to the creation of the Statistical Reporting Service, known today as National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
The 1997 Appropriations Act shifted the responsibility of conducting the Census of Agriculture from U.S. Census Bureau to USDA. Since then the census has been conducted every five years by NASS. The latest census was released on February 4, 2009 .
Read more about this topic: National Agricultural Statistics Service
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