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A reliable public dataset for high-quality analysis of agricultural diversity, productivity, and biotechnology in the US

Speakers: AgBioFEWS Cohort 1

Website | Twitter: #AgBioFEWS

Abstract

We are collecting and indexing publicly available information to create a reliable dataset that enables an open science approach to studies of crop diversity and productivity. Our dataset covers the period from 1992 to the present when agricultural biotechnology inventions have been increasingly made available in the US, and is explicitly oriented towards being able to integrate the effect of these technologies with other types of data. The collection effort includes computationally and, where necessary, manually correcting for shifts in data collection categories and units in the USDA Census of Agriculture, as well as digitizing a portion of the data which is currently available only in the form of scanned typewritten documents. By creating this quality-controlled extended dataset, we enable detailed studies at the level of individual crops and counties, and correct for systemic errors that otherwise limit the utility of the public USDA data. Our modifications are particularly helpful for enabling studies of change over time. We have also manually reviewed every transgenic event within both the USDA APHIS Petition for Determination of Nonregulated Status and the USDA “Am I Regulated?” process and created a coded index of every individual gene, trait, and genetic modification method used in each of the 302 biotechnology deregulatory events to date. Similar to portions of the USDA Census, this information has historically been available only by reading through many hundreds of pages of documents. Our proximate interest in creating these datasets has been to enable creation of a model to isolate the effects of introduction of individual GM traits on crop diversity at the local, regional, and national level over the past 30 years. More generally, by making quality data regarding biotechnology in agriculture readily available to the scientific community we hope to enable a wide range of rigorous work in this area.