Back On Track

Fruit producers in the northwest along with just about every other ag producer in the nation was left hanging recently when the government shut down. Reports that producers count on were not released among other things. Lance Honig with USDA's National Ag Statistics Service says it's good to be back.

HONIG: Well we missed being there. You know a lot of people probably don't realize just how much they use the information until it's not there and of course that's how most of us are in most areas of life we don't really appreciate the things we have until they're taken away.

Honig says that information is really important.

HONIG: Well information is highly valuable. When you need to be able to make a decision you are going to be able to make a much better decision if you've got information to base that on and a lot of time I think that we don't necessarily realize where the information is coming from because it gets repackaged and reproduced in so many ways and that's a good thing but sometimes that can cause us to lose track of where it comes from at the source so when that source goes away that's the first time we realize, oh, that's going to create a problem.

He talks about where and how they gather the information.

HONIG: Our information comes primarily from the farmers. We do surveys all throughout the year and ask the farmers directly to report to us how many acres have they planted or harvested. What do they expect their yield to be? What was their actual yield at the end of the year. We're coming up on a major survey here the first couple of weeks in December on the crop side. About 80-thousand farmers are going to be surveyed across the country.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.