This study suggests that confidence intervals for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices may be improved if they are estimated using an empirical approach. Empirical confidence intervals are calculated following Williams and Goodman's (1971) method and use historical forecast errors...

In an effort to improve marketing of their products, many farmers use market advisory services (MAS). To date, there is only fragmented anecdotal information about how farmers actually use the recommendations of market advisory services in their marketing plans, and how they choose among these...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2000 corn and soybean crops. A new database from the Agricultural Market Advisory Services (AgMAS) Project is used in the evaluation. This database should not be subject to survivorship and...

This study examines whether market participants anticipate the predictable component in USDA revisions of corn and soybean production forecasts during 1970/71 through 2003/04 marketing years. The analysis revealed that markets consistently under-predicted October corn production revisions and...

This report presents marketing profiles and loan deficiency payment/marketing loan gain profiles for the advisory services followed by the AgMAS Project for the 1995 through 2000 corn crops. Marketing profiles are constructed by plotting the cumulative net amount priced under each program's set...

The purpose of this report is to address two basic performance questions for market advisory services in wheat: 1) Do market advisory services, on average, outperform an appropriate market benchmark? and 2) Do market advisory services exhibit persistence in their performance from year-to-year?...

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 research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2001 corn and soybean crops. The results for 1995-2000 were released in earlier AgMAS research reports, while results for the 2001 crop year are new. Certain explicit assumptions...

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...