integrating parcels into farm records management larry cutforth wlia conference 2/23/04
TRANSCRIPT
Outline
• FSA digital farm field boundaries and imagery programs
• Role of parcels in farm field records management.
• Future directions
USDA Farm Service Agency
Responsible for Federal farm programs:
• Price support
• Farm disaster relief
• Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
• Farm loan
• 56 county offices , 400 employees in WI.
Farm Service Agency Records
• Federal agency responsible for managing farm field boundaries and attributes.
• Set farm, tract, and field numbers used by other agencies.
Farm Record Changes
• Producers inform FSA of ownership and land cover changes.
• FSA offices check deeds and other documentation to confirm ownership and acreage.
• Concerned with cropland acreage. Non-cropland ownership boundaries not carefully documented.
Modernization of Land Records
• Started conversion to GIS June 2003
• Digitizing complete for all WI counties by June 2005
• Migrating to ArcGIS in 2005
CLU Certification
• Before the CLU may be used for USDA programs, it must be certified.
• Process:• Clean up spatial and tabular errors• Mail maps to each farm land owner and
operator to check location field boundaries.
• Use GIS acres for FSA programs.
Challenges
• Steep learning curve for staff
• Conservation Reserve Program – revising most contracts to match GIS calculated acreage.
• Constant maintenance
Users of Common Land Unit Data
• Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
• County Land Conservation Departments
• Crop insurance
• Assessors
• Farm Owner and operators
Data Access
• Setting data sharing agreement with land conservation departments for full CLU access.
• General public – all attributes stripped except acreage.
• CRP information – subject to privacy act restrictions.
FSA Imagery
• Replaced 35 mm. slides with digital imagery in 2003
• Statewide coverage
• Leaf-on to check crop cover
• 2003 – 2 m. res., unrectified imagery
• 2004 – NAIP and 1 m. res., unrectified imagery program
• Price $30-$50 per county
NAIP – National Agriculture Imagery Program
• 2 m. res. Orthos collected for 34 WI counties in ‘04
• UTM projection, MrSid format
• Plan statewide 1 m. NAIP in ’05.
• ’05 NAIP partners – WDNR, DATCP, 12 counties
2 m. NAIP 1 m. NAIP
Source:
UW-Madison
ERSC
Using Parcels for Drawing Farm Field Boundaries: A No-brainer
• Easy to use – deeds difficult and time consuming to interpret
• Highly accurate land records base
• Up-to-date
• Do not need to reinvent the wheel
Parcel Caveat Emptor
• “The map provides a representation of the geometry and topology of tax parcels. It is not intended to be used for the legal determination of land ownership or to be in any way a substitute for the land ownership and interest descriptions contained in individual deeds.”
- Dane Co parcel metadata
Challenges of Using Parcels
• Accessibility – Deal with each county
• Parcel update lags
• Different boundary definition than ours in some situations.
• New workflow needed for digitizing.
Portage, Dane, and Clark
• Discrepancies between aerial photo maps and parcels noted on 70% of parcels.
- Most right-of-way differences
- Using parcels tripled clean-up work on CLU.
Using Parcels to Capture Ownership Changes
Land sold off without informing FSA.
FSA is informed of an estimated 40% of land ownership changes
Parcels as Reference Layer
• Valuable reference for checking location of farm field boundaries.
• Iterative process to clean-up records over time.
Parcel Wish List
• Easier coordination to obtain parcels
• Access to owner names and addresses
• Web service access
• Create a system where FSA receives a flag that a parcel change has occurred.
Summary• FSA seeks data sharing agreements with
counties to obtain parcels.
• Need to coordinate farm records with county agencies more. Duplication of effort is wasting scarce resources.
• Parcels have been an invaluable reference for FSA farm field maintenance. Thank you for sharing this valuable data.