<\/p>\n<\/a>Grains<\/u> –
\nThis\u00a0morning we\u2019re looking at some of the acreage numbers ahead of the report on Friday.\u00a0 For reference, here is a quick breakdown of the average guesses:<\/p>\n
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Today we\u2019re simply looking at whether there is any tendency of the average guesses vs. the actual USDA numbers.\u00a0 For our purposes this morning, we\u2019re only going to look at corn and soybeans.\u00a0 We\u2019ll discuss wheat at some point later this week.<\/p>\n
The chart below breaks down the individual corn and soybean actual figures vs. the average guess.\u00a0 The first thing that immediately sticks out in the chart is there seems to be a general tendency for soybean area to come in less than the average guess over the past few years.\u00a0 Only in 2014 did the actual figure turn out to be larger than the average guess, and even in that case the miss was fairly small.<\/p>\n
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The second item that stands out is there doesn\u2019t appear to be any particular bias present in corn.\u00a0 Clearly in corn the major miss on last year\u2019s report is what stands out.\u00a0 With that in mind I also combined the two together for the second chart below.\u00a0 This shows the combined acreage vs. the combined average guess.\u00a0 Again generally you can see there is a tendency for the combined acreage total to come in slightly less than the average guess, but as mentioned above that is largely due to soybeans.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s big miss to the upside in acreage stands out as quite an outlier.<\/p>\n
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So what happened last year? Well, I think I\u2019ve mentioned before that the USDA (until this year) has been banking on declining acreage in their Outlook Forum projections due to lower projected farm incomes as crop prices have come off their highs.\u00a0 This has thus far proven incorrect, but in the case of last year I think it proved costly to the market as I think the relatively low starting point of the 2016 Outlook Forum fooled most.\u00a0 We\u2019ll discuss March USDA figures vs. Outlook Forum figures in more detail tomorrow.<\/p>\n
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