Traditionally, agricultural forecasts, whether for the coming year or several years into the future, have been based on assumptions of normal weather and trend crop yields. That weather is seldom normal and that yields seldom fit trends are well recognized. However, relatively little attention...

Rapidly expanding ethanol production in the U.S. was given further impetus with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandating a minimum production of 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012. The availability of the by-product feeds of ethanol production (corn gluten feed and meal...

The number of workers on farms and in food processing represents about 16 percent of total employment in basic industries in Michigan. Converting farm labor to full time equivalents, however, reduces the proportion to about 11 percent. The industries dependent upon agriculture and food...

Forecasts of global crop yields prior to planting have generally been single values, based on entirely past trends. Regression analysis testing a combination of data from ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation) and ARMA models suggests that yield forecasting errors can be reduced, generating more...

Fuel ethanol demand is projected to increase because of proposed ban on methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) in gasoline, renewable fuels standard, and the revised eight-hour ozone standards. In this paper, several scenarios of increased fuel ethanol demand and its effects on crop and feed prices,...

Traditionally, agricultural forecasts, whether for the coming year or several years into the future, have been based on assumptions of normal weather and trend crop yields. That weather is seldom normal and that yields seldom fit trends are well recognized. However, relatively little attention...