Keywords: Administrative Data, End-of-Season Acreage, Official Estimates, Small Area Estimation
The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) produces end-of-season acreage, production and yield estimates that are used in the process of setting payments for some agricultural programs. The end-of-season acreage estimates are obtained via an expert assessment method of USDA’s NASS survey data and administrative data from the USDA's Farm Service Agency and USDA’s Risk Management Agency. Alternatively, we consider small area estimation modeling approaches, which are reproducible and provide measures of uncertainty for the point estimates. The models considered have the potential to improve the direct survey estimates for areas with small sample sizes by using administrative data and by borrowing information across areas. Different contributions of the administrative data to the final model-based estimates are discussed.