USDA Must Disclose Database of Crop Information

Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a governmental agency must disclose all records that are requested by “any person,” unless the information sought is exempt from a FOIA request. Here, the plaintiff is a commercial vendor of agricultural data, and made various FOIA requests for various records of farm data maintained by the USDA involving the ag subsidy and benefit programs. USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) released some of the information, but withheld other information on the ground that it contained private information about individual farmers and, as a result, was exempt from a FOIA request. The trial court sided with the plaintiff in ordering the disclosure of requested information in two of the files, but also granted USDA’s motion for summary judgment and allowed the USDA to withhold information in two other files – the Compliance File and the Geographic Information System (GIS) database.

On appeal, the court reversed the trial court as to the withheld files. The court reasoned that while the Compliance File (a database with information on crops and field acreage) might not directly say anything about a particular program, it said everything about whether a particular farm was eligible to participate and would thus shed light on the agency's performance of its statutory duties. Without the Compliance File data, the public would have great difficulty verifying that FSA was properly conducting its spot checks and properly using that data. The GIS file is a database with farm data on a digitized aerial photograph. About 98 percent of the farms in the files were family owned, in which the financial makeup of the businesses mirrored the financial situation of the family members. The GIS database was used to monitor program compliance. The court reasoned that the GIS database should be made public because it would allow the public to more easily determine if the USDA was catching cheaters and lawfully administering its programs. Multi AG Media, LLC v. United States Department of Agriculture, No. 06-5231, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 3226 (D. C. Cir. Feb. 15, 2008).