What happens when data doesn’t match reality?
JUNEAU, Wis. — USDA data can drive prices and risk programs, but what happens when data doesn’t match reality, and when new data requests come into USDA from checkoff organizations to meet debatable Net Zero methods? These are questions the American Dairy Coalition (ADC) is raising with USDA.
At issue: A request by DMI and its Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy asks USDA to expand farm-level data collection for their environmental modeling, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—covering detailed feed rations by animal age and class, operational water use and re-use beyond irrigation, manure management systems, and more, and to make it publicly available at state and county levels.
ADC says pump the brakes, warning in a recently-published brief that DMI’s Innovation Center has set Net Zero goals driven through the FARM ES program using methane metrics that remain unsettled.
Meanwhile, as ADC points out in public comments filed April 9, existing USDA data already show gaps — like the growing spread between reported All-Milk prices and what farmers actually receive.
At the same time, ADC points to farm-level data already being collected through supply chains, often as a practical condition of market access. This was confirmed in ADCs recent survey. So the questions become:
- What do “voluntary” and “aggregated” really mean?
- Who owns a dairy farmer’s data?
- Who controls how it is used?
- And who captures the value it creates?
“Farm data has value, and that value is being captured,” said Sherry Bunting, ADC Dairy Market Analysis & Policy Advisor. “Dairy farmers need to remain in control of how their proprietary business data is collected, used, shared, aggregated, and monetized. We are looking carefully at this issue, which has been raised by dairy farmers and confirmed in our recent producer survey.”
