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NASS demonstrates QuickStats tools and shows scope of 2022 Census of Agriculture data
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Summary
National Agricultural Statistics Service staff demonstrated how to use the Census landing page and QuickStats to access the 2022 Census of Agriculture, explained dataset scope (millions of data points), download options including the API, and answered questions about a removed search bar feature and file limits.
At a virtual breakout session, National Agricultural Statistics Service officials demonstrated how to access and analyze the 2022 Census of Agriculture via the agency's Census landing page and QuickStats tool, and answered user questions about downloads, API access and recent changes to site functionality.
The presentation began with Brian Combs, chief of NASS's Environmental Economics and Demographics Branch, who said NASS published "over 6,000,000 distinct data points" on Feb. 13 and has released about "7,000,000 more" since that initial release. "The power of the census is its ability to visualize and understand important changes in agriculture at the US state and county levels," Combs said.
Combs walked attendees through the Census landing page structure (Volume 1 Chapter 1 for U.S. data; Chapter 2 for state and county data), pointed users to Appendix A (methodology) and Appendix B (report form), and flagged downloadable products including web maps, highlights, subject series, special studies and profiles. He emphasized the census's operational definition of a farm: "A farm is defined as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold or would have been sold during the census year." Combs said that farm definition was established in 1974.
Misty Salmon, who also works in the Environmental Economics and Demographics Branch, led a live QuickStats demonstration showing how to build queries for "farms and land in farms," compare 2022 with prior census years, and locate county-level tables (for example, table 11 for cattle and calves). Salmon advised users to keep queries simple at first (one location and year) to avoid unintentionally filtering out results, and she showed how the QuickStats user guide's Excel metadata helps identify the correct program, commodity, domain and data item selections.
On technical details, Salmon said the QuickStats web application limits a single query to 50,000 records but added that "more records could be queried with the API functionality of QuickStats." She also showed where to download the full census dataset from the Census landing page. When asked whether a QuickStats query can be saved, Salmon demonstrated that the application produces a unique URL for each query that users can copy and revisit; removing the word "results" from the URL can restore the selection parameters for broader views.
Participants asked about a previously available search-bar feature. Combs said NASS moved the QuickStats data server to the cloud to modernize storage and "we did lose a little bit of functionality," and he said staff are exploring options to restore useful features such as the search bar. On recordings and help, Combs stated the session is being recorded and indicated recordings will be posted to the NASS website; he directed users to contact the subject-matter experts listed in publications for assistance.
The session concluded with confirmations that the Census landing page contains full state and county downloads, guidance on using cross-tabulation tables (tables 70'077) and NAICS coding (Table 77) for specialty assignments, and instructions for obtaining API keys via the QuickStats help/developer pages. Combs closed by encouraging attendees to reach out to NASS experts if they have difficulty locating data.
Next steps: NASS noted upcoming releases related to the 2022 census, including an irrigation and water management survey (late October) and the census of aquaculture (December).
