T HE submission of a long-range report to Congress in 1957 marked an important milestone in the life of the Statistical Reporting Service. That report set out the broad specifications for technical development necessary for meeting the demands for agricultural data, and it laid the legislative history basis for securing appropriations necessary to implement that program. The first phase of the long-range program, involving extensive use of probability sampling, objective yield measurements as a basis for estimation of crop yields, and the enumerative collection of a considerable range of data concerning the production of crop and livestock products and certain related phases of the agricultural estimating program, is well along toward an operating basis. For the June survey in 1964, 32 states were on an operating basis, and the remaining 16 (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) were on a pilot basis. Simultaneously, active planning has been underway looking toward the application of probability sampling and enumerative data collection to the collection of prices received by farmers and prices paid by farmers. These are the data that underlie the Parity Index, the Index of Prices Received by Farmers, and the computation of parity prices, receipts from sales of farm products, expenses of production of farm products, net income of farmers, and that part of the national income accounts which relate to the agricultural sector of the economy. These price data, therefore, are basic to planning important programs, to laying the groundwork for legislation relating to agriculture, to the administration of programs, and to the measurement of the health of the total as well as the agricultural economy. A word of background may be helpful. In 1867-nearly a century ago-the Department of Agriculture began collecting prices received by farmers for their products, and in 1910, it began the collection of information on prices paid by farmers for a limited number of commodities. The number of commodities covered for both prices received and