Methodology

How CropReview builds its U.S. crop production dataset — fully transparent, fully reproducible, and built only on U.S. government public-domain data from the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.

The Concept

CropReview translates USDA agricultural statistics into ranked, comparable, plain-language pages for every major U.S. commodity crop and every state that grows them. The goal is to make the same data the federal government, commodity traders, and agricultural researchers use available in a form that any reader can navigate without specialized tools or training.

Every figure on the site is a direct observation from USDA NASS QuickStats. We do not estimate values, do not model gaps, and do not editorially weight the rankings. When NASS publishes a new figure or issues a correction, our dataset updates accordingly.

Primary Data Source

The single primary data source for every page on this site is the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service QuickStats database. NASS is the federal agency responsible for U.S. agricultural statistics; it conducts dozens of mandatory and voluntary surveys covering planted and harvested acres, production volume, yield, prices, and inventories across every state.

The QuickStats API exposes NASS data as a queryable database keyed by commodity, geography, year, and statistic. We pull the most recent year of data for each of the 10 tracked commodities, for every state where NASS reports a non-zero observation, in two statistic categories: “area harvested” (in acres) and “production” (in the unit USDA uses for each commodity, typically bushels, pounds, hundredweight, or bales).

Supplementary context comes from two related USDA agencies. The USDA Economic Research Service publishes commodity outlook reports, supply-and-demand estimates, and historical analyses we cite when discussing why a particular ranking moved. The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service publishes the global production, supply, and distribution database we cite when comparing U.S. crop output to world totals.

Step-by-Step Calculation

For each of the 10 tracked commodities, our build pipeline performs the following steps:

1. Query NASS QuickStats for the commodity, all states, the most recent year of finalized data, and the “area harvested” statistic. The result is one row per state with non-zero acreage.
2. Repeat the query for the “production” statistic in the unit NASS uses for that commodity (bushels, pounds, hundredweight, or bales depending on crop).
3. Join the two result sets on state, producing one row per commodity-state pair with both acreage and production volume.
4. Compute totals: total acreage for the crop is the sum across states; total production is the sum across states; state count is the number of states with non-zero observations.
5. Compute share of total for each state: the state's production divided by the national total, expressed as a percentage. This drives the “pctOfTotal” field shown on individual crop pages.
6. Sort and rank states within each crop by acreage (descending) to identify the leading producers. The top three are surfaced in summary cards across the site.
7. Build state-level aggregates: for each state, sum across all crops to compute total state cropland and crop count.

Per-Field Data Attribution

Every individual data field on every page traces to a specific NASS QuickStats query:

• Total acres (crop): NASS “area harvested” statistic, summed across all reporting states for the most recent year.
• Total production (crop): NASS “production” statistic, summed across all reporting states for the most recent year, in the commodity's native unit.
• State count (crop): count of distinct states with non-zero NASS observations for the commodity in the most recent year.
• Top states (crop): the leading states by harvested acreage, with each state's share of national production calculated as state production divided by national total.
• Total acres (state): sum of harvested acres across all tracked crops for the state in the most recent year.
• Crop count (state): count of distinct crops with non-zero NASS observations for the state in the most recent year.
• Top crops (state): the leading crops within the state by harvested acreage.
• Last updated timestamp: the timestamp of the most recent NASS data ingestion, recorded in stats.json.

Update Frequency

NASS publishes preliminary annual crop production estimates following the growing season, typically in the late fall (the “Crop Production Annual Summary”), and finalizes the figures over the following months as additional surveys settle. We rerun the build pipeline whenever NASS publishes a new release, refreshing every page on the site. Historical data is not retroactively rewritten unless USDA itself issues a correction.

Known Limitations

• Annual cadence. Crop production data is annual, not monthly or quarterly. Within-year movements (planting decisions, mid-season yield revisions, weather disruptions) are not visible until the following year's release.
• Limited commodity coverage. The launch dataset covers 10 major commodity crops. Specialty crops (fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, hops, etc.), livestock, and dairy are not yet included; these are tracked by NASS but require separate query patterns we will add as the site expands.
• State-level only. NASS publishes county-level data for many commodities, but our launch pages aggregate to the state level. County drill-down is on the roadmap.
• Production unit varies by crop. Corn and wheat are reported in bushels, cotton in bales, rice in hundredweight, and so on. The “total production” column reflects USDA's native unit for each commodity; cross-commodity production comparisons should be made carefully.
• NASS revisions. Preliminary NASS figures are revised in subsequent releases. The numbers on this site reflect the most recent NASS publication; if you are citing a specific value for academic work, also consult NASS directly to confirm whether a revision has occurred since.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Cite

If you use data from CropReview in published work, please cite the underlying USDA NASS source for raw figures and cite CropReview for derived rankings and aggregations:

CropReview. “[Page Title].” cropreview.org, 2026. Underlying data: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, QuickStats database. Accessed [date].