1. What is a CLU?
A Common Land Unit (CLU) is the smallest unit, which has:
a permanent, contiguous boundary
common land cover management
common owner
common producer association

2. CLU Maintenance Tool Purpose
Roughly 1/3 of FSA’s business directly involves using and maintaining maps and geospatial information.
The Common Land Unit (CLU) data layer is the most critical component for successful GIS implementation within FSA.
CLU Data is currently maintained at the service centers as annotations on hardcopy aerial photography or using ArcView 3x.
CLU will be used to manage Farm Service Programs, monitor compliance, and respond to natural disasters, among other tasks.

3. Service Center Agencies maintain a wide array of. information
Service Center Agencies maintain a wide array of information related to land units. This information is fragmented among paper documents and computer systems, but is currently being consolidated into digital format.
CLUs are being digitized to produce a CLU data layer. Digitizing involves using GIS to draw border lines on top of the original orthophotograph, calculate the area of the polygon and attach elements of data, such as a label or a field number or a record identifier, to this polygon shape. For Service Centers, these polygons will represent CLU boundary lines.