Charlie Ingram, Director of NASS Enumerator Program at National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, preparing a plot in Colorado for wheat objective yield measurements.

This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio.

When I was growing up on the farm in South Carolina, my family used a very simple method of estimating our production. As long as we planted the same acreage, we assumed that we were getting the same amount of crops at harvest time. But while this approach is still used on some farms, it is impossible to use these assumptions to get reliable state and national production estimates. So how does the USDA go about measuring the yields to get an accurate forecast for the annual crop production? Read more »