The last two weeks have been problematic for companies that depend on the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) custom reports about the movement and pricing of produce items.

On its website, the service says its portal is currently experiencing a problem with data availability for the reports.

"There are some gaps in the data from May 15 to May 27, 2016 as well as for some historical data for movement," the AMS says in a note at the time of writing.

"We are working to resolve the problem and apologize for the inconvenience. Once the data has been fully restored we will update this notice."

The AMS has not yet responded to requests for comment on why the problem has occurred and when a solution may be in sight.

Agronometrics CEO Colin Fain, whose market analysis programs use big data from a range of global produce markets, said custom reports are working for shipping point data, but there have been problems with the 'Terminal Market' and 'Movement' selections.

"The last reports I have registered are Tuesday May 24th for movements and Thursday the 26th for terminal markets," he said.

United Fresh senior vice president of public policy Robert Guenther was taken by surprise when we enquired about the issue.

"I have not heard why that is happening but I’m trying to track that down at this point of time," he said.

And how much impact could this have on the sector?

"It depends on the commodity. Some people view the market news data much more importantly than others – we have always supported the market news data reporting over the years," Guenther said.

"They get funding from Congress as well for these market news data reports, and it’s not something I’ve heard a whole lot about.

U.S. Marketing Services owner Mike Gretz said his consulting and analysis business was not affected by the measure as his team conduct surveys of retail market prices in-store, however he had heard reports of problems in the AMS reports during the first quarter of 2016.

Fain added that he hoped more people in the industry reported the problems they were experiencing with the service.

If the gaps in data are affecting your business or ability to make important decisions, please let us know in the comments section below or by sending an email to news@freshfruitportal.com.

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