Larger Sample Cushions USDA as June Survey Response Edges Up to 39.8%
NASS leaned on an around 35% bigger sample to offset stubbornly low farmer participation, giving statisticians more raw responses to build the year’s pivotal acreage and stocks estimates
The farmer participation rate that shadowed USDA’s spring crop reports improved only marginally for Tuesday’s June releases, but the agency entered the data-crunching process with substantially more information in hand thanks to a deliberate expansion of its survey sample.
The June Agricultural Survey, which underpins both the annual Acreage report and the quarterly Grain Stocks figures released June 30, drew a 39.8% response rate, Agricultural Statistics Board Chair Lance Honig said during a StatChat following the release. That marks a modest uptick from the 37.6% rate recorded for the March Prospective Plantings survey — the lowest March participation on record — but it remains far below the historical norms of an earlier era, when response rates ran 80% to 85% in the 1990s and last held above 50% before 2019.
The more consequential story, Honig signaled, lies beneath the headline percentage. NASS increased the survey sample by roughly 35% for the June collection — about 22,500 more producers than were contacted in June 2025 — meaning the agency had considerably more raw responses to work with even at a similar response rate. With 90,291 producers contacted nationwide to determine planted acreage and grain stocks as of June 1, a 39.8% response translates to roughly 35,755 completed surveys, against a June 2025 base of approximately 69,500 producers contacted.
That sample expansion was no accident. It reflected the planned, OMB-approved change USDA outlined after the March participation collapse rattled confidence in the spring numbers. Under that plan, the agency boosted the June acreage sample by about 35%, with smaller increases of roughly 10% slated for the September, December, and following March reports. The strategy effectively trades a higher contact volume for resilience against low response, aiming to preserve the statistical precision of estimates that farmers, traders, lenders, and policymakers rely on as a common reference point.
The data those responses produced landed Tuesday with few fireworks on acreage but a modest surprise in stocks. USDA pegged 2026 corn plantings at 95.3 million acres, down 3% from last year, unchanged from the March intentions figure, and still the fourth-largest corn area since 1944, with 87.4 million acres expected to be harvested for grain. The Grain Stocks side carried the friendlier read: corn stocks in all positions totaled 5.29 billion bushels as of June 1, up 14% from a year earlier but below the 5.408-billion-bushel average trade estimate. Soybean stocks came in at 1.06 billion bushels, up 5% and just above expectations, while old-crop all-wheat stocks of 920 million bushels ran 8% above last year but below the trade guess.
The participation question has carried unusual weight this year. The March survey’s record-low 37.6% response — down from 44.3% a year earlier — unfolded as the Iran conflict and a sharp run-up in fertilizer prices roiled input markets mid-survey, and it became a dominant storyline in its own right, with NASS openly acknowledging a “trust issue” with producers that it needed to work to rebuild. Skepticism had been building since a large upward revision to 2025 harvested corn acreage, compounded by deep staffing losses across NASS and sister agencies, fed doubts about the reliability of USDA’s data.
For Tuesday’s reports, the larger sample provides a measure of insurance. While the 39.8% rate underscores that the underlying participation challenge has not been resolved, the bigger denominator gave statisticians a deeper pool of actual responses to anchor the acreage and stocks estimates — the cushion NASS was counting on as it works to firm up its numbers and restore confidence after the spring scare.
