OMAHA (DTN) -- Plans for a national survey of the use of distillers co-products for livestock feed have been canceled due to funding reductions, USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service announced in a news release Monday.

Because of budget cuts in the 2011 fiscal year and a likelihood of additional reductions in 2012, NASS said it has conducted reviews of all its programs using mission- and user-based criteria in order to ensure that the most important and useful data remained available.

"The decision to eliminate or reduce these reports was not made lightly, but it was nevertheless necessary, given the funding situation," the release stated, adding that the budget cuts were "necessary now."

According to Joseph J. Prusacki, director of the Statistics Division for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, NASS began a comprehensive review of the products and service provided by the agency in the fall of 2010.

"A hierarchy or ranking of NASS programs were developed," Prusacki told DTN Tuesday. "The program changes announced (Monday) by NASS incorporated the finding from the Program Review Team."

The Distiller Co-Products for Feed Survey was not the only report canceled. Other reports eliminated include: the Annual Reports on Farm Numbers, Land in Farms and Livestock Operations; all catfish and trout reports, the Annual Bee and Honey Report, the Annual Hops Production Report. Several reports will be published less frequently, including chemical use reports, Monthly Potato Stocks Report and Fruit and Vegetable in-season forecast and estimates.

The distillers grains survey was to be the first-ever, nation-wide survey to measure the use of distillers grain by U.S. livestock producers. The survey was to include approximately 70,000 livestock operations in 48 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, and was to include beef producers (both cow/calf and feedlot), dairy producers, swine producers and poultry producers.

The goal of the survey was to see how livestock producers are using distillers grains -- where they are sourcing distillers grains and how much they are using -- as well as how producers base their decisions regarding DDG purchases, such as nutrient values, product consistency inclusion rates, storage, etc.

The survey was to be mailed in early January 2012 with data collection planned for early 2012 and the final information to be released in the summer of 2012.

The NASS had planned to conduct the survey every five years in order to see how the industry changes.

When DTN talked to NASS in March 2011, the agency was asking for public input from both the livestock and ethanol sectors to formulate questions for the survey.

Prusacki said the survey had not been mailed, so no data collection for the co-products survey had begun.

He added that no future co-products data collections are planned at this time.

Some in the ethanol industry were hoping that the survey would help with criticisms that ethanol's consumption of U.S. corn is taking away from the amount of corn used for food. The survey could have helped disprove that argument. A third of the corn used for ethanol returns as livestock feed in the form of distillers grains, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Even with more than 8 million metric tons of U.S.-produced distillers grains exported to other countries in 2010, there were still about 24 million tons of co-products left in the U.S., most of which was used for livestock feed.

Charlie Staff, executive director and CEO of the Distillers Grains Technology Council, called the cancellation of the survey "disappointing."

"We really did need that information. We are totally lacking information as to what the rapid expansion of distillers use in the animal feed area is," he said. "It is disappointing that we are not going to know what those new inclusion numbers are."

The survey would have also helped ascertain how much corn is displaced by distillers grains, Staff said. While USDA has estimated about 100,000 bushels displaced by distillers, the actually number appears much larger than what USDA is estimating, he said.

Cheryl Anderson can be reached at cheryl.anderson@telventdtn.com

(CZ/SK)

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