COURT ORDERS RELEASE OF FSA FARM DATA
News Date May 06, 2008
As required by a February 15, 2008, decision of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced April 28 that it is releasing sets of complex and statistically detailed databases from FSA files about farming operations throughout the United States.
The release is in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by a commercial vendor and includes FSA data for all operations owned and operated by individual agricultural producers and closely held family-owned business entities. These files can be used to reveal details of farming operations at a specific geographical location. Records of compliance information that are released include all information in a producer's Farm Compliance Record such as: planting date; reported acreage; official acreage measurements; insurance coverage; type of crop; whether or not the crop is irrigated; intended use of the crop; crop status, including double crop program acreage, experimental, repeat crop acreage, prevented planting or failed crop. (Contact: Charlie Ingram)