Sep

28

For Corn Traders, from Jeff Watson

September 28, 2011 |

4 Comments so far

1. Kermit on September 28, 2011 12:17 pm

   Yes, it’s kind of fun to look around those maps. But do you really think it is useful in trading corn futures?

2. jeff watson on September 28, 2011 5:02 pm

   Perhaps you would care to show me why it’s not a useful tool.

3. Anonymous on October 1, 2011 11:11 am

   Most of us farmers lie. If higher yields are being reported only the farmer with higher yield will submit a report as the lower yield guy will be ridiculed. If yields are being reported as low and somebody submits a high report he will be called a bragger and inaccurate. If you read and keep track of the daily comments you will see that if the price has been going up for awhile the only ones to post will be bullish whereas if the price has been declining, only bearish will appear and anybody that was bullish will be ridiculed. I personally never have and never will send a report in as I cannot see where it could ever help me. Of the other farmers I talk with nobody has sent numbers in either. Besides the vast majority don’t know with accuracy the yield. It’s normally a little better than the neighbors (if you can get him to give his numbers before he asks you about your’s).

4. Greg Vincent on October 3, 2011 10:16 am

   I’m the editor of AgWeb. I want to respond to a couple of things in the post from anonymous.
   I suppose anything is possible and some farmers will lie. The blind reporting system makes this unnecessary and the reports cannot be tied a farmer or a field. So the chance for ridicule is only there if you say, “Hey, that 80 bu. field was mine.” We’re not going to tell anybody that.
   Last week USDA said 15% of the corn harvest was complete. Our numbers reflect about 10% of the total crop area that has been harvested to date. that gives us a very good margin of error, below a +/- 2%, as a matter of fact.

   This, however, is only for yields that have been harvested to date. So would I say the numbers are accurate? Yes. Would I say the numbers reflect where we’ll end up at the end of the year? Today they cannot. There is still 80% to 85% of the crop left to harvest. This does give you a great indication of where the crop is now and how yields are looking as they come out of the field.