Developing a National GIS Data Layer for Agriculture, One County at a Time

Author: James Heald
Organization: USDA Farm Service Agency

1400 Independence Ave SW
Room 6538-S
Washington, DC 20250
USA

Phone: 202-720-0787
Fax: 202-720-0920
healdj@fas.usda.gov

The USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA), along with partner agencies Rural Development and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, is in the process of implementing desktop GIS at more than 2,500 field service center locations nationwide.

The most critical component in the successful implementation of GIS for the Farm Service Agency is development of the common land unit data layer. The common land unit layer will ultimately include all farm fields, rangeland, and pasture land in the United States. In conjunction with digital imagery and other data, FSA will use the common land unit to manage farm service programs, monitor compliance, and respond to natural disasters, among other tasks.

Phase One of the data development was the creation of 12 digitizing centers at field office locations in seven states. These offices are developing the data layer with on-screen digitizing using ArcView GIS in a Windows NT environment. Special digitizing and quality control extensions were written for the project.

Future developments will include a program of outsourcing data production, developing new digitizing centers, changing the software environment, and distributing the completed data sets to field service centers with training and tools to maintain the data. This presentation will discuss the current progress of this effort, methodology, standards, lessons learned, and future directions.