comprised of farms of similar size or production. 
The counts of survey respondents and 
nonrespondents were used to compute the 
adjustment factor for the weighting cell. The 
methodology assumed nonresponse was random. 
For example, a weighting cell has 100 farms of 
which 80 responded and 20 did not. Every 
respondent would have its original weight of 1 
increased to 1.25 (100/80) to represent the farms not 
responding. 
An error was identified in the telephone data 
collection instrument that caused 1,283 respondents 
to not be asked the transitional acreage questions in 
Section 16 of the report form. The error was 
remedied and every effort was made to recontact the 
respondents. An additional weight was applied to 
the successfully recontacted respondents for values 
in Section 16 only to account for those respondents 
that we were not able to recontact. The calculation 
methodology was the same as the overall 
nonresponse weight methodology. 
Undercoverage Weights 
The 2012 CO A was used to adjust for 
undercoverage. The records of respondents to the 
2014 Organic Survey were matched to the records 
responding on the 2012 CO A organic production 
section. For the records that responded as having 
organic production on both the 2014 Organic Survey 
and on the 2012 CO A, the undercoverage weights 
from the 2012 CO A were applied to the 2014 
Organic Survey response. These records were used 
to build a regression model of undercoverage 
weights using 2014 Organic Survey responses. For 
each 2014 Organic Survey response that did not 
match to a 2012 CO A record, the estimated weight 
from the regression model was that record’s 
undercoverage weight. Because the 2014 Organic 
Survey list of exempt organic operations was not as 
complete as the 2012 CO A list, the undercoverage 
weight did not fully adjust for undercoverage of 
exempt organic operations. Thus, the number of 
exempt organic operations are not fully represented. 
Misclassification Weights 
At the conclusion of data collection, NASS 
attempted to contact the farms that reported no 
organic production to verify that the farm was 
accurately classified as a non-organic farm. As a 
result of this effort, NASS was able to calculate the 
rate of non-organic misclassification and found that 
the rate was consistent across the states. The 
reciprocal of the rate of non-organic 
misclassification was applied to all of the responses 
reporting no organic production to define the 
misclassification weight in the 2014 Organic Survey. 
MEASURES OF SURVEY QUALITY 
Results of the 2014 Organic Survey are subject to 
nonsampling errors. Sources of nonsampling errors 
include respondent reporting errors, recording errors, 
errors in data capture, or errors in action taken 
during editing and imputation. Extensive efforts 
were made to minimize these types of errors. Table 
C provides statistical precision estimates for the 
number of farms and acres and the total value of 
sales for the United States and for each state. 
2012 Census of Agriculture Appendix A A - 3 
USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service 
