IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/uiucrr/14785.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: Methods, Performance and Market Impacts over 1970 - 2004

Author

Listed:
  • Good, Darrel L.
  • Irwin, Scott H.

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to improve understanding of USDA crop forecasting methods, performance and market impact. A review of USDA's forecasting procedures and methodology confirmed the objectivity and consistency of the forecasting process over time. No changes in methodology occurred in 2004. Month-to-month changes in corn and soybean production forecasts from 1970 through 2004 indicated little difference in magnitude and direction of monthly changes over time. USDA production forecast errors were largest in August and smaller in subsequent forecasts. There appeared to be no trend in the size or direction of forecast errors over time. On average, USDA corn production forecasts were more accurate than private market forecasts over 1970-2004, with the exception of August forecasts since the mid-1980s. The forecasting comparisons for soybeans were somewhat sensitive to the measure of forecast accuracy considered. One measure showed that private market forecasts were more accurate than USDA forecasts for August regardless of the time period considered. Another measure showed just the opposite. As the growing season progresses the difference in the results across the two measures of forecast accuracy diminished, with USDA forecast errors in soybeans about equal to or smaller than private market errors. USDA corn production forecasts had the largest impact on corn futures prices in August and recent price reactions have been somewhat larger than historical reactions. Similar to corn, USDA soybean production forecasts had the largest impact on soybean futures prices in August with recent price reactions appearing somewhat larger than in the past. Overall, the analysis suggests that over the long-run the USDA performs reasonably well in generating crop production forecasts for corn and soybeans.

Suggested Citation

  • Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2005. "Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: Methods, Performance and Market Impacts over 1970 - 2004," AgMAS Project Research Reports 14785, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:uiucrr:14785
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.14785
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14785/files/rr050003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.14785?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L. & Gomez, Jennifer K., 2001. "The Value Of Usda Outlook Information: An Investigation Using Event Study Analysis," 2001 Conference, April 23-24, 2001, St. Louis, Missouri 18948, NCR-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management.
    2. Olga Isengildina & Scott H. Irwin & Darrel L. Good, 2006. "Are Revisions to USDA Crop Production Forecasts Smoothed?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 88(4), pages 1091-1104.
    3. Grace Juhn & Prakash Loungani, 2002. "Further Cross-Country Evidence on the Accuracy of the Private Sector's Output Forecasts," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(1), pages 1-4.
    4. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2003. "Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: An Overview of Methods, Performance and Market Impacts," AgMAS Project Research Reports 37496, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    5. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    6. Egelkraut, Thorsten M. & Garcia, Philip & Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L., 2002. "An Evaluation Of Crop Forecast Accuracy For Corn And Soybeans: Usda And Private Information Services," 2002 Conference, April 22-23, 2002, St. Louis, Missouri 19068, NCR-134 Conference on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk Management.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ying, Jiahui & Shonkwiler, J. Scott, 2017. "A Temporal Impact Assessment Method for the Informational Content of USDA Reports in Corn and Soybean Futures Markets," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258201, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Bahram Sanginabadi, 2018. "USDA Forecasts: A meta-analysis study," Papers 1801.06575, arXiv.org.
    3. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2006. "Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: Methods, Performance and Market Impacts over 1970 - 2005," AgMAS Project Research Reports 37514, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    4. Sanders, Dwight & Altman, Ira J. & Manfredo, Mark R. & Anderson, Rachel, 2009. "Using USDA Production Forecasts: Adjusting for Smoothing," Journal of the ASFMRA, American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, vol. 2009, pages 1-9.
    5. Tannura, Michael A. & Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L., 2008. "Weather, Technology, and Corn and Soybean Yields in the U.S. Corn Belt," Marketing and Outlook Research Reports 37501, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    6. Irwin, Scott H. & Sanders, Dwight R. & Good, Darrel L., 2014. "Evaluation of Selected USDA WAOB and NASS Forecasts and Estimates in Corn and Soybeans," Marketing and Outlook Research Reports 183477, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    7. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2011. "USDA Corn and Soybean Acreage Estimates and Yield Forecasts: Dispelling Myths and Misunderstandings," Marketing and Outlook Briefs 183528, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    8. MacDonald, Stephen & Ash, Mark & Cooke, Bryce, 2017. "The Evolution of Inefficiency in USDA’s Forecasts of U.S. and World Soybean Markets," MPRA Paper 87545, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2006. "Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: Methods, Performance and Market Impacts over 1970 - 2005," AgMAS Project Research Reports 37514, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    2. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2003. "Understanding USDA Corn and Soybean Production Forecasts: An Overview of Methods, Performance and Market Impacts," AgMAS Project Research Reports 37496, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    3. Bahram Sanginabadi, 2018. "USDA Forecasts: A meta-analysis study," Papers 1801.06575, arXiv.org.
    4. Good, Darrel L. & Irwin, Scott H., 2011. "USDA Corn and Soybean Acreage Estimates and Yield Forecasts: Dispelling Myths and Misunderstandings," Marketing and Outlook Briefs 183528, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
    5. Fiechter, Chad & Kuethe, Todd & Zhang, Wendong, 2023. "Information Rigidities and Farmland Value Expectations," ISU General Staff Papers 202306131414240000, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    6. Botto, Augusto C. & Isengildina, Olga & Irwin, Scott H. & Good, Darrel L., 2006. "Accuracy Trends and Sources of Forecast Errors in WASDE Balance Sheet Categories for Corn and Soybeans," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21332, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    7. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2024. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 425-457, June.
    8. Chang, Chia-Lin & de Bruijn, Bert & Franses, Philip Hans & McAleer, Michael, 2013. "Analyzing fixed-event forecast revisions," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 622-627.
    9. repec:ecb:ecbrbu:2017:0037:1 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Christian Hellwig, 2004. "Heterogeneous Information and the Benefits of Public Information Disclosures (October 2005)," UCLA Economics Online Papers 283, UCLA Department of Economics.
    11. Benjamin Born & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher, 2011. "How Should Central Banks Deal with a Financial Stability Objective? The Evolving Role of Communication as a Policy Instrument," Chapters, in: Sylvester Eijffinger & Donato Masciandaro (ed.), Handbook of Central Banking, Financial Regulation and Supervision, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Herrada, Rafael & Pérez, Fernando & Montoro, Carlos & Castillo, Paul, 2020. "La comunicación de la política monetaria en los bancos centrales de América del Sur," Revista Moneda, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, issue 181, pages 4-9.
    13. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2009. "Policy with Dispersed Information," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 11-60, March.
    14. Mostafa Beshkar & Jee-Hyeong Park, 2017. "Dispute Settlement with Second-Order Uncertainty: The Case of International Trade Disputes," CAEPR Working Papers 2017-010, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    15. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2018. "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2477-2512, September.
    16. Berna Karali & Scott H. Irwin & Olga Isengildina‐Massa, 2020. "Supply Fundamentals and Grain Futures Price Movements," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(2), pages 548-568, March.
    17. Goldstein, Itay & Yang, Liyan, 2019. "Good disclosure, bad disclosure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 118-138.
    18. Ichiro Fukunaga, 2007. "Imperfect Common Knowledge, Staggered Price Setting, and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1711-1739, October.
    19. Jonathan G James & Phillip Lawler, 2017. "Optimal Transparency and Policy Intervention with Heterogeneous Signals and Information Stickiness," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(5), pages 577-600, September.
    20. Tiff Macklem, 2005. "Commentary : central bank communication and policy effectiveness," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 475-494.
    21. Camille Cornand, 2006. "Speculative Attacks and Informational Structure: an Experimental Study," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(5), pages 797-817, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crop Production/Industries; Marketing;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:uiucrr:14785. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dauiuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.