United States Department of Agriculture
Natural Resources Conservation Service		 Natural Resources Inventory and Analysis Institute Go to Accessibility Information
Skip to Page Content
 Picture of Map Analysis





FOCS Instructions

Please contract Elvis Graves (elvis.graves@usda.gov), Natural Resources Manager, Operations Management & Oversight Division, at (202) 720-3750 for additional information. Problems with data access or calculation questions can be referred to David Buland (David.Buland@usda.gov), Economist, Natural Inventory and Analysis Institute, at (254) 770-6522.

These baseline estimates of potential (eligible) clients are for field office use in populating the potential clients database fields found in FOCS. They also have use in reporting assistance to clients for watershed and other project related activities such as EQIP, WRP, CRP, and other projects. Field offices should use this data to establish baselines, however, if they have a more accurate method or have more accurate information they may modify these baseline numbers. However, they should keep in mind that this is an attempt to provide national standardization of data and if another source of information is utilized it should be well documented and a full description of the rationale used should remain in the civil rights files at the field office.

Several known problems with this calculation that District Conservationists may consider:

  1. This data is based on the 1990 Census and the 1992 Ag. Census. In areas with significant population growth since 1990, updates on county population estimates are available at http://www.census.gov/datamap/www/index.html. The 1990, 1997, and estimated 2002 demographics are also included on the following spreadsheet:

    This Document Requires Microsoft Excel
    Microsoft Excel Spreadsheetpop909702.xls (2297 KB)

    Use the percent increase in general population by race/sex/Hispanic to index the non-Ag. clients numbers up. This entire baseline should be redone after the 1998 Ag. Census and the 2000 Population Census.
  2. Areas with prisons or colleges may or may not be considered these as potential clients.
  3. The non-agricultural clients are based on home ownership numbers, not total population. This underestimates minority clients, particularly Native Americans in reservations.
  4. The Agricultural clients are based directly on the demographics of the 'operator' information collected from the 1992 Ag. Census. The definition of 'Operator' in their survey is "the individual owner, operator, senior partner, or person in charge for the type of organization". With that definition, only 7% of Ag. Census reported operators are Female. We recognized this problem, but there is no alternative data source.
  5. There was a long debate in the workgroup on using general population or home ownership data for non-agricultural clients. The decision was made to use homeownership because we primarily work with landowners, people with the power to make changes on the land resource base.
  6. The Population data is based on where people live. The Ag. Census county data is based on where the primary farm is located. But the Ag. Census Zip Code data is based on where the 'operator' lives. There are a lot of farms in the plains with zip codes in the Sunbelt or in big cities. NRCS needs to re-engineer methods of reaching these absent landowners and operators for conservation decisions.
  7. Estimated acreage for each county is included in the following spreadsheet:

    This Document Requires Microsoft Excel
    Microsoft Excel Spreadsheetacreage.xls (1047 KB)

    This uses the published data from the Ag. Census tables 36 and 37, adjusted to meet the NRCS racial definitions, and prorated by sex proportional to the number of female operators in each racial category. There are 2 million acres of farmland 'missing' due to disclosure requirements. Since Acreage by farm is 'confidential', there are 0 acres listed when there are only a few minorities in a county. Since we have complete sex and racial information on the other tables, the DC will see those cases as he/she inputs the data into FOCS. Then the DC is encourage to add estimated acreage for these minorities based on local knowledge. Please find these 2 million missing acres.

  Back to Top