A Guide to a Point-and-Click Database for NASS Crops
J. Greiner and W.L. Harman, Texas AgriLife Research
This program processes state acreage and production information for all crops published by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), county-by-county or by crop reporting district. FOR TEXAS ONLY, the program includes a Texas map of counties to view multiple county statistics. Texas is the only state for which a county-district map was prepared at this time.. After downloading the program, a NASS icon is loaded on the user’s desktop. The program includes data for 3 example states. The user first downloads data for any state or states following the instructions on the menu bar under "Download Instructions", and then uses the "Import Data " option to import the data into the programAfter the import is finished, select the state wanted from the drop down list. States may be deleted at this point. For any state except Texas, a single button will appear entitled "Anystate County and District Data" For Texas ONLY an additional button entitled "Interactive Texas County and district map” will appear.
The page that appears allows the user to select any county or district and display and/or print the NASS data for either one or two different years. If using the graphing version. (NON-Vista), if a 2nd year is selected, the headings will turn pink to indicate that the user may click on any heading to show a graph of the yearly data for the current year range. If using the VISTA operating system, this option is not available at this time.For Texas, when the user clicks on "Interactive Texas County and district map”, data for selected years can be accessed by year for any county or sets of counties by pointing and clicking on those of interest on the Texas map. County buttons will turn black when clicked and the appropriate acreage will be displayed. Acreage totals can be combined for several counties by clicking on multiple counties and selecting “Show Accumulated Counties”. Aggregated data by crop reporting district is also available by choosing the District of interest in the upper right part of the screen. This selection automatically clicks all counties on the Texas map that are included in the crop reporting district. Clicking again on the district name will de-select all the counties in that district.
