U.S. Foreign Agricultural Trade Statistical Report, Fiscal Year 1970

This issue of the Annual Supplement to the Foreign Agricultural Trade of the United States introduces two additional new features: Expanded area coverage and a combination of two previously published separate reports giving trade data by countries and by commodities. The area coverage was expanded so that trade data could be grouped by developed and less developed countries to facilitate international comparisons and analysis. The two Annual Supplements (By Countries and By Commodities) were combined to reduce publication costs and to facilitate the accessibility and use of these data. As with all new procedures, automatic data processing involves some changes in methods and data classification. For example, export data classifications under the Bureau of the Census Schedule B were changed January 1970 and necessitated an expanded presentation of the data under the old and new Schedule B for this year since complete comparability was impossible. These changes in data classi¬ fication necessarily expanded the volume of data presented for this year but will not be required for subsequent years. These changes were initiated by the Bureau of the Census to increase comparability of U.S. trade data with other trade statistics published by various international organizations. Some of these changes are discussed in the SPECIAL NOTICE section of this publication.