Errors in Acreage

Delta Farm Press reports USDA screwed up. Agweb provides some detail:

After the Oct. 10 reports were issued, FSA analysts noted a discrepancy between the raw data on its mainframe and the data it had provided to NASS on a system known internally as a “data mart.” The data mart correlates and organizes the raw data for presentation to FSA county staff, NASS and other users in a more concise and accessible format.

USDA analysts have confirmed that data mart information used in previous reports was consistent with the information in the FSA mainframe database. Database management experts will review the discrepancies in the October data, focusing on how the two systems interact and how the mainframe data are transmitted and translated into the format used in the data mart.

Interesting that the first report seemed to blame NASS, the second makes it seem like a screwup in FSA.