Farm Business and Household Survey Data: Customized Data Summaries from ARMS

Overview & Data Farm Structure & Finance Featured States Crop Production Practices Questions & Answers Step-by-Step Demonstration Documentation About ARMS Contact the ARMS Team

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ARMS Documentation

Documentation for the Agricultural Resources and Management Survey (ARMS) below consists of:

• General documentation of the survey design, process and procedures, including statistical methods for estimation for major components of the survey
  
• The survey instruments or questionnaires administered in the survey for each crop, year, phase, and version

Introduction

Sponsored jointly by ERS and the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), ARMS began in 1996 as a synthesis of the former USDA cropping practice, chemical use, and farm costs and returns surveys, which dated back to 1975.

ARMS is a series of interviews with farm operators about their farm business and household. It is conducted annually in three phases over the course of the survey year, which runs from June through April. The ARMS data collection starts during the fall when production practice and cost data are collected, and finishes in the spring when a follow-on interview collects data about whole-farm costs like overhead, interest, and taxes.

Phase I, conducted during the summer of the reference year:
Farmers selected for inclusion in the survey sample are screened to verify their operating status and to determine whether they are producing commodities targeted for data collection. This first phase is merely a screening questionnaire used to improve survey efficiency; it does not contribute to the user data files.

Phase II, conducted in the fall and winter of the reference year:
Randomly selected operating farms from Phase I are interviewed to collect information on their production practices and chemical use. Phase II mirrors the former Cropping Practices Survey. Phase II data are collected at the individual field or production unit level. Phase II is a series of commodity surveys conducted to obtain physical and economic data on production inputs, management practices, and commodity cost of production.

Phase III, conducted in the spring of the year following the reference year:
A nationally representative sample of farmers is interviewed to obtain information on their costs and returns during the reference year. Farmers that reported production practices for specific commodities in Phase II are also contacted to obtain information on their costs and returns, including data needed to estimate the costs of production associated with their production practices. Phase III data are collected at the whole farm level. Phase III is designed to represent all U.S. farms and focuses on farm income and expenditures, farm financial arrangements, and other characteristics of the farm business and farm household.

The phase II and III components are related, in that the operators are asked to complete both interviews-but only when designed to prepare a crop cost of production estimate. The cost of production estimates include the enterprise share of farm business expense items such as land taxes, insurance, fuel expenses, etc. that are collected in the phase III interviews.

Sample Design

The ARMS survey is technically described as a multi-phase, multi-frame, stratified, probability-weighted sampling design. What do these three characteristics of the sample design mean?

Multiframe

NASS uses two sampling frames to select farms for the survey:

• The primary sample is derived from the NASS List Frame. NASS maintains a list of farm operations that exhibit certain characteristics. The lists are constructed and maintained from many different sources, including the Census of Agriculture and other NASS surveys. Because some information is already known about these farms, the list can be sorted according to farm types and size classes.

• The second sampling frame for ARMS is the NASS Area Frame. This is used only to capture farms not on the List Frame, and consists of randomly selected agricultural land segments that represent all land in farms. Each year, NASS conducts a spring survey selected from the Area Frame to estimate crop acreage and land use. This survey identifies all land uses within the segment, and it can be used to stratify target crops for follow-on surveys. A sample for ARMS is then selected from the spring survey results. Only those farms not on the List Frame (nonoverlap) are retained for sampling.

Stratified

Strata are divisions within the sample frames that have particular characteristics. Farms in different strata are sampled with a different probability of selection. Within a stratum, the weight (expansion factor) is based on the probability of its selection. In the Area Frame, land use or crop type can be used to stratify target crops for follow-up surveys.

Probability-weighted

Because of the complexity of the sample design, each observation has a different weight, or expansion factor, to reflect its probability of selection and, therefore, what part of the sampled universe it should represent. Appropriate sample weights (expansion factors) are provided to prepare population estimates from the survey results. Population estimates are constructed by weighting each sample with the appropriate expansion factor. A jackknife re-sampling process was used with 15 additional weights from NASS for each sample to estimate the Relative Standard Error (RSE) for each data item.

Furthermore, data from the Phase II of ARMS is divided into three data files: 1) fertilizers, 2) pesticides, and 3) all other data designated as the main file (e.g., field characteristics, management practices, and production input data other than fertilizers and pesticides). Sample weights associated with each of the three data files depends on the number of usable responses for the respective parts of the Phase II questionnaire. The usability of these tables for the construction of chemical or fertilizer use estimates was determined independently from the completion of the remainder of the questionnaire. Typically, there are slightly different response rates for these three parts of the questionnaire, and hence, weights differ between the main file and the two sub-files (pesticide and fertilizer). Cross-tabbing of variables across the three data files can result in different population estimates for the same variable.In general, such population estimate differences across tables are minimal.

Data Collection
Trained enumerators conduct personal interviews, using questionnaires developed by NASS and ERS, with farm operators to collect data about their farm operations for the ARMS survey. An interviewer's manual outlines detailed enumeration procedures for each phase of the survey. These documents provide specific directions on how the interview is to be conducted and insight into how to interpret each question.

Quality Control
NASS provides enumerator training prior to the survey through a series of enumerator workshops. NASS Headquarters and ERS provide training materials to the State survey statisticians who conduct the training.

After questionnaires are completed by the enumerators, each questionnaire is reviewed by supervisory enumerators for completeness, inconsistent responses, or errors, and then transferred to a NASS State office. Supervisory statisticians also review each questionnaire before it is keyed into an electronic format. A computerized edit routine is then used to identify other potential errors or inconsistencies, checking that responses fall within expected ranges and that answers are consistent. When responses are anomalous, State survey statisticians investigate and either correct or verify the responses. A survey administration manual provides specific details about survey administration and data processing procedures.

Source, Content, and Coverage
ARMS is an ongoing program surveying U.S. farms in the 48 contiguous States and covering specific commodities on a rotating basis.

Farms
ARMS data are collected at both the individual field or production unit level (Phase II), and for the whole farm (Phase III). The exact questions asked vary with the type of crop or livestock enterprise being sampled. Download the Survey to see the questions asked for Phases II and III for specific crops and livestock in specific years.

The target population for ARMS is the official USDA farm population in the 48 contiguous States, which is defined as all establishments, except institutional farms, that sold or would normally have sold at least $1,000 of agricultural products during the year.

Commodities
Commodity-specific information is collected on a rotating basis in both the field-level (Phase II) and whole-farm (Phase III) portions of the ARMS. Production practice data for major crop and livestock activities (corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, dairy, and hogs) are gathered more often than that for other commodities (other feed grains, other small grains, sugarbeets, rice, peanuts, tobacco, and poultry). Livestock data (cow-calf, hogs, and dairy) have been collected approximately every 5 years, on a staggered rotation.

ARMS coverage by commodity and year

Commodity

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Apples

Corn

Soybeans

Cotton

Winter Wheat

Spring Wheat

Durum Wheat

Fall Potatoes

Rice

Sorghum (milo)

Flue-cured Tobacco

Sugarbeets

Peanuts

Sunflowers

Oats

Barley

Cow-calf

Hogs

Dairy

Broilers

= Phase II field-level Production Practices Report only.   = Both Phase II field-level Production Practices Report and Phase III whole-farm Cost of Production survey.   = Phase III whole-farm Cost of Production survey only.

States

The States included in the survey each year vary, depending on the crops surveyed and to help minimize respondent burden. Field-level data collected in ARMS Phase II surveys do not represent the total U.S. acreage of each crop surveyed, but generally represent over 90 percent of acreage and production of the target commodity. The sampling used in ARMS Phase II was not intended to support State estimates, but sufficient data were obtained in many States to report these estimates. However, the ability to partition data for individual States is very limited.

Learn More

Review more documentation of the survey design, process and procedures, including statistical methods for estimation for major components of the survey:

• Farm & Operator Households: Structure & Finance
• Crop Production Practices
• Featured States


• Variables list

Get the Survey Instruments

Download the survey questionnaires (pdf):

• Farm & Operator Households: Structure & Finance
• Featured States
• Field-Level Crop Production Practices
• Commodity Production Costs & Returns