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Grain markets spent Thursday’s session in confusion over the agency’s latest sales numbers

Ben Potter, Senior editor

August 31, 2022

3 Min Read
USDA building
Getty/iStockphoto

UPDATE: On Aug. 31, USDA-FAS Administrator Daniel Whitley issued the following statement regarding weekly Export Sales reporting:

USDA Foreign Agricultural Service Administrator Daniel Whitley issued the following statement today regarding weekly export sales reporting:

As a result of unanticipated difficulties with the launch of the new Export Sales Reporting and Maintenance System, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service will temporarily revert to the legacy system while we work to fully resolve the issues with the new system. FAS will be unable to publish weekly export sales data on Thursday, Sept. 1 or Thursday, Sept. 8, but we expect to resume regular reporting on Thursday, Sept. 15.

 

Since the system relies on data submissions by exporters, FAS is working closely with individual exporters to ensure that past, current, and future export sales data are accurate. Our staff will continue to conduct outreach and provide support to both data reporters and data users in anticipation of the re-launch of the new system.

Data integrity, credibility, and transparency are top priorities for FAS. The timely and accurate reporting of agricultural export sales data is vital to effectively functioning markets. The new Export Sales Reporting and Maintenance System is designed to assure data security and availability. It will also provide a platform for future automations and enhancements that benefit both data reporters and data users.

FAS recognizes the impacts of the problems that arose from this rollout. Despite the measures taken over many months to transition to the new system, we understand that further action is necessary to ensure credible and accurate data reporting. We are working to resolve the problems and are committed to keeping our stakeholders informed as we do so.

Export sales reporting is a partnership between USDA and U.S. agricultural exporters and we recognize data integrity and data quality are interrelated. As FAS rolls out the new system, we look forward to strengthening our partnership with the exporter community to ensure overall compliance, accuracy, and functionality of the new system.

Aug. 25, 2022 - USDA’s latest set of export sales data, out Thursday morning and covering the week through August 18, was supposed to be a milestone of sorts. Today marked the launch of the agency’s upgraded Export Sales Reporting and Maintenance System 2.0, or ESRMS 2.0.

Unfortunately, the rollout didn’t exactly go as planned. Some of the data were wildly divergent from trade expectations. Take soybeans, for example – old and new crop sales were had supposedly climbed to nearly 300 million bushels, but analysts were only expecting to see between 12.9 million and 47.8 million bushels.

Analysts do miss the mark from time to time, but rarely by this wide of a margin. As a result, most traders shrugged off the numbers and shifted their focus elsewhere on Thursday, content with waiting for an eventual explanation from USDA.

USDA-FAS finally responded about an hour after the markets closed on Thursday. Here is the agency’s statement in its entirety:

Today, USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service launched a new Export Sales Reporting and Maintenance System. This is the system through which U.S. exporters are required, by law, to report any sales transactions entered into with buyers outside the United States for a number of key commodities. The information collected through the system is aggregated and reported to the public each week by FAS.

During today’s launch, FAS encountered challenges that affected the physical dissemination of the data as well as data quality. As a result, the agency has taken the system offline and is retracting the weekly export sales information disseminated earlier today.

Data integrity, credibility, and transparency are top priorities for FAS, and the timely and accurate reporting of agricultural export sales data is vital to effectively functioning markets. FAS recognizes the disruption this situation has caused and is taking immediate steps to rectify it.

Today’s issues occurred despite the measures taken over many months to transition exporters to the new system and to ensure the accuracy of the data reported. FAS leadership fully recognizes the impacts and is committed to resolving the current problems and keeping our stakeholders informed as we do so.

 

About the Author(s)

Ben Potter

Senior editor, Farm Futures

Senior Editor Ben Potter brings two decades of professional agricultural communications and journalism experience to Farm Futures. He began working in the industry in the highly specific world of southern row crop production. Since that time, he has expanded his knowledge to cover a broad range of topics relevant to agriculture, including agronomy, machinery, technology, business, marketing, politics and weather. He has won several writing awards from the American Agricultural Editors Association, most recently on two features about drones and farmers who operate distilleries as a side business. Ben is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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