August Report Week

Earlier this week, the USDA's National Ag Statistics Service released the August Crop Production Report. 

Corn production numbers, in particular, have caused an uproar on social media and elsewhere. The gist of the discussion sounds something like this: "Where are they coming up with these numbers? That can't be close to right!" 

Here's the reason for this post: In both 2017 and 2018, the August report elicited similar responses. Maybe not to the extent that this report has caused turmoil, but similar nonetheless. And then when harvest got underway and then completed, we harvested near record overall yields.

This growing season has not been like those two, but we need to remember that USDA was closer to the correct numbers in August than most anyone would like to believe in both of the past two years. Maybe instead of raising quite so big a stink about how wrong the report is, we should wait and see exactly how close they are.

Kevin Nelson, CCA 4R NMS