The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between weather, technology, and corn and soybean yields in the U.S. Corn Belt. Corn and soybean yields, monthly temperature, and monthly precipitation observations were collected over 1960 through 2006 for Illinois, Indiana, and...

Mail surveys are a very popular instrument for researchers as well as government agencies and commercial firms to obtain information about farmers. A large percentage of farmers do not respond to these mail surveys. To gain insight into why farmers do not respond and their preferences regarding...

The economic value of public situation and outlook information has long been a subject of debate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic value of USDA WASDE reports in corn and soybean markets. The investigation is based on event study analysis, with the "events" consisting of...

This study uses quantile regressions to estimate historical forecast error distributions forWASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices, and then compute confidencelimits for the forecasts based on the empirical distributions. Quantile regressions with fiterrors expressed as a function of...

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...

The purpose of this research report is to summarize the features of several types of "new generation" grain marketing contracts. Over the last several years, new types of grain marketing contracts have been developed by the grain industry in an attempt to improve the results of the marketing...

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...

This study investigates empirical methods of generating prediction intervals for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices over the 1980/81 through 2006/07 marketing years. Empirical methods use historical forecast errors to estimate forecast error distributions, which are then used to...

The lack of consistently acceptable convergence performance for Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) corn, soybean, and wheat contracts since late 2005 has been widely discussed (e.g., Henriques, 2008).1 Convergence performance is summarized in Figure 1, depicting delivery location basis levels on the...