Notice of Intent To Reduce the Frequency of Chemical Use Surveys and All Associated Reports

This notice announces the intention of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to reduce the currently approved information collections for chemical use surveys approved under OMB <greek-i> 0535-0218. The chemical use surveys included in this docket are: Agricultural Resource Management Survey Phase II (ARMS II), Vegetable Chemical Use Survey, Fruit Chemical Use Survey, and Post Harvest Chemical Use Survey. The Post Harvest survey was suspended under a previous notice. The ARMS II Chemical Use Survey is normally conducted every year and it consists of two versions; Production Practices and Costs Report (PPCR), and the Production Practices Report (PPR). The PPR component is conducted with NASS-only funding to gather field crop chemical use data. The PPCR is co-funded by a cooperative agreement with the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS). The PPCR component efficiently collects costs associated with the various production practices to complete the cost of production estimates for ARMS targeted crop commodities. The ARMS Phase II-PPCR efficiently collects detailed cropping practice and cost data by focusing on field-level and expanding to whole farm, thus greatly reducing respondent burden while maintaining accuracy of reported data. For the 2011 crop year, NASS is making no changes to the Fruit Chemical Use survey and Field Crops Chemical Use survey. Barley and sorghum are the targeted crops for Field Crops Chemical Use survey. Please note that wheat and soybeans were originally in the 2011 crop year but were moved to 2012 crop year due to current budget cuts.