due dates, a labeled report form, an instruction sheet, 
and a return envelope. One follow-up mailout to 
nonrespondents occurred in February 2015. Printing 
and mail packet preparations and the initial and 
follow-up mailouts were managed by the U.S. 
Census Bureau’s National Processing Center (NPC) 
in Jeffersonville, IN. Additional nonresponse 
interviews occurred via telephone by three NASS 
Data Collection Centers and in person by National 
Association of State Departments of Agriculture 
(NASD A) staff in March and April of 2015. 
Data were collected for a select group of operations 
by the NASS Regional Field Offices (RFO). To 
minimize the number of agency contacts, operations 
were included in this group if they were scheduled 
for contact of other NASS agricultural surveys. 
Report forms were labeled at the NPC and sent to the 
RFOs in February 2015. RFO staff and contracted 
NASDA employees collected data by personal 
enumeration or by phone from February 2015 
through April 2015. 
REPORT FORM PROCESSING 
Data Capture 
All report forms returned to the National Processing 
Center were immediately checked in using bar codes 
printed on the mailing label and removed from the 
follow-up mailout. All forms with any data were 
scanned and an image was created for each page of a 
report form. After the images were created, the data 
were keyed as reported from the paper form 
received. Any inconsistencies and respondent 
remarks were reviewed by statisticians in the 
Regional Field Offices and corrected, if necessary, 
during data editing and analysis. 
Data Editing and Analysis 
Data from each report form were processed through 
a computer edit which flagged inconsistent entries. 
Each report with a flagged entry was reviewed by 
Regional Field Office (RFO) and/or Headquarters 
(HQ) statisticians. Action was required for any 
record with reported data that were clearly incorrect, 
for example, in some cases, respondents may have 
failed to provide all of the information requested, 
only indicating the presence of an item but not the 
A - 2 Appendix A 
amount. These items were tagged for machine 
imputation. 
After the initial edit, an automated imputation 
program supplied missing data based on similar 
organic agricultural data from a respondent in close 
geographic proximity. A post-imputation computer 
edit was performed to ensure imputation actions 
provided acceptable results. Instances where imputed 
data failed edit checks were referred to statisticians 
for corrective action. 
The computer edit ensured the data on a report form 
were internally consistent. An analysis tool was 
provided to examine the data across records to check 
for distributional irregularities and data outliers. 
Statisticians corrected suspect data when necessary 
and re-edited the record. 
ESTIMATION 
NASS’s goal was to produce organic agricultural 
totals for the publication that were fully adjusted for 
list undercoverage, nonresponse, and 
misclassification. Although much effort was 
expended making the 2014 Organic Survey mail list 
as complete as possible, the mail list did not include 
all U.S. organic farms, resulting in list 
undercoverage. Some organic farm operators who 
were on the 2014 Organic Survey mail list did not 
respond to the survey, despite numerous attempts to 
contact them. In addition, although each operation 
was classified as an organic farm or non-organic 
farm based on the responses to the report form, some 
misclassification occurred; that is, some organic 
farms were classified as non-organic. Table B 
provides the farm counts from the 2012 Census of 
Agriculture (COA) and the farm counts and acres 
from the 2014 Organic Survey (organic acres were 
not collected in the 2012 COA). 
Nonresponse Weights 
Not every organic farm that was contacted provided 
the requested data. Nonrespondents were accounted 
for in the final data by increasing the survey weights 
of the respondents inversely to the proportion of 
nonrespondents. Record-level list frame control data 
and 2012 COA state-level number of organic farms 
were used to define weighting cells (strata) 
2012 Census of Agriculture 
USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service 
