11/16/06 New export sales database

Farm and Ranch November 16, 2006 Every Thursday since 1978 USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service has issued a weekly export sales and shipment report. Now FAS offers its most user-friendly version of the weekly reports ever at its web site, which according to Tim Rocke of FAS, includes a new database. Rocke: "What this new query system is, it allows you to query by week, by commodity, by country and destination." And the database also includes historical context as those searching the query can go back through weekly export reports as far back as 1999. But Rocke says the main selling point is the ability to download data in spreadsheets, plus; Rocke: " A key component of this a graphic package. It allows the user to automatically generate a graph that would allow the package to show you the country by commodity and it gives you sales and exports, comparing this year, versus last year, versus 5 years ago." Rocke says this was done based on customer requests. And their response? Rocke: "It has been positive feedback. People have always wanted to query on the data and now they can query and start a database themselves. And again, it is the graphics package. You get immediate impact, whereas you just look at the numbers and what does that mean? And now you have immediate graphic packages and that's wheat people have been asking for." The new query system and database can be found at this website, www.fas.usda.gov/esrquery I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.