32 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Specific reports from the field service are assembled in Washington, 

 tabulated, averaged, and summarized separately for each source, each 

 crop, and each State. The resulting figures are checked against one 

 another and against similar data for the previous month, for the same 

 month of the previous year, and for the average of the same month 

 for the previous 10 years; and a separate and independent estimate 

 for each crop and State is made by each member of the crop report- 

 ing board, after which the board agrees upon and adopts a single 

 figure for each crop and State. 



This, in brief, is an outline of the organization and system which 

 has been developed in the Department through more than half a 

 century of experience in crop estimating, and indicates the care 

 and thoroughness with which Government crop reports are prepared. 

 Because the monthly Government crop reports and annual estimates 

 are fundamentally important as the basis of programs of the Depart- 

 ment and the State colleges of agriculture for crop and live-stock 

 production, marketing, distribution, and conservation, for the promo- 

 tion of agriculture as an industry, for the guidance of individual 

 farmers, for appropriate national and State legislation affecting 

 agriculture and the food supply, it is believed that the crop-report- 

 ing service should be strengthened. This should be done through 

 estimates by counties as well as by States. Then a near approach 

 to census completeness and accuracy could be made, especially with 

 reference to crop acreages and numbers of live stock ; a clearer differ- 

 entiation between total production and the commercial surplus would 

 be possible, and the Department would be better able to analyze, 

 chart, and report country and world-wide agricultural conditions 

 with special reference to surplus and deficient crop and live stock 

 production. 



SEED-GRAIN LOANS IN DROUTH AREAS. 



Acting upon urgent representations that many wheat growers in 

 certain sections of the West who lost two successive crops by winter 

 killing and drouth had exhausted their resources and might be com- 

 pelled to forego fall planting and, in some cases, to abandon their 

 homes unless immediate assistance was extended, the President, 

 at my suggestion, on July 27 placed $5,000,000 at the disposal 

 of the Treasury Department and the Department of Agricul- 

 ture to enable them to furnish aid to that extent. The pri- 



