NASS has 12 regional offices throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and a headquarters unit in Washington, D.C. NASS conducts hundreds of surveys and issues nearly 500 national reports each year on issues including agricultural production, economics, demographics and the environment.

During the Civil War, USDA collected and distributed crop and livestock statistics to help farmers assess the value of the goods they produced.

Producers in today's marketplace would be similarly handicapped were it not for the information provided by NASS.

[3] The primary sources of information for NASS reports are farmers, ranchers, livestock feeders, slaughterhouse managers, grain elevator operators and other agribusinesses.

Once the information is gathered and interpreted, NASS issues estimates and forecasts for crops and livestock and publishes reports on a variety of topics including production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm income and finances, and agricultural chemical use.