More Than Counting Beans: Adapting USDA Data Collection Practices To Track Marketing Channel Diversification

Urban Farm DB summary

Agricultural producers are diversifying their marketing channels, but the U.S. Census of Agriculture primarily tracks only direct-to-consumer sales, organic sales, and community supported agriculture farms. This paper proposes that administrative reporting changes in the 2012 census and the introduction of new questions for the 2017 census can improve observations on marketing channel usage at both farm-level and sector-level with greater precision.