Author: Michael Ferrari, PhD
VP, Applied Technology & Research
On Tuesday, the USDA issued their 2009 crop production summary report for the primary commercial US crops. As readers of Weather Trends crop reports are aware, we discuss our US agricultural outlook in our weekly reports in terms of the 18 major producing states for both corn and soybeans. Now that the annual summary is in, we see that we were spot on in regards to our US corn yield forecast, which was issued to clients during planting. The USDA’s final number for corn yields (for the top 18 states) was 153.9 bushels/acre. This compares to the Weather Trends yield number, which was in the 154-156 bu/acre range for nearly the entire growing season. As total agricultural production and yields in the high volume corn belt states are ultimately, more important to the market (ie., it doesn’t matter much to the market that that AZ corn yields are 175 bu/acre), we always argue that it is better to focus on the top 18 states. So while corn did produce a 13.2 billion bushel crop, it actually could have been higher with optimal weather conditions as the season’s yield was limited by lower growing degree days.
While the market was reacting to every passing front during the growing season, this serves as another example of the value embedded within the long range forecast for setting seasonal crop expectations. The text below was pulled from our weather/market discussion that was issued on 17 August.
