Project Purpose
lRemote sensing based cropland acreage indications
–County and state level “major crops”
–Internal to NASS
–Considered for setting official estimates
–Target fall/winter delivery for major commodities
–
lOutput categorized crop specific Cropland Data Layer
–Distribute to public at the cost of reproduction
–"Freeware" viewer – ESRI’s ArcReader
–Accuracy statistics
•The Cropland Data Layer Program provides the Agency with internal proprietary county and state level indications of major commodities, and secondarily provides the public with "statewide" (where available) mosaicked categorized output products after the public release of county estimates.
•Satellite based estimates will not completely replace surveys of farmers for several reasons:  acreage planted estimates are done in June, before the crop canopy fully develops; cloud problems can cause loss of large areas; and the enumerators ability to ask farmers other questions, not related to acreage during interviews.
•This project builds upon the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) traditional crop acreage estimation program, and integrates the enumerator collected ground survey data with satellite imagery to create an unbiased statistical estimator of crop area at the state and county level for internal use.
•No farmer reported data is revealed, nor can it be derived in the publicly releasable Cropland Data Layer product.
•Up to two years worth of ortho-rectified categorized images where applicable are published on the DVD, along with associated accuracy statistics.
•A freeware browser “ArcReader” (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA) is bundled onto the DVD, allowing for users without a GIS or image processing software package to be able to view the CDL products.
•An “ArcReader” project is built on the Cropland DVD to assist the user in browsing the CDL and any ancillary vector data layers.