USDA’s January crop production and stocks reports from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) packed quite a punch, providing, among other surprises, the largest November to January drop in average corn yield ever recorded. Farmers and analysts have questioned how the NASS data could shift so sharply for corn yield, stocks and cotton production. NASS Crops Chief Lance Honig told AgriTalk Radio’s Chip Flory that the answer is simply that the data told the story.
In the AgriTalk broadcast, Flory questioned Honig about four specific areas of the December and January reports: revisions to the grain stocks reports, a drop in cotton production and that 3.8 bu. per acre drop in corn yield.
Revisions to the Grain Stocks Reports
The changes to the Grain Stocks Report in December and throughout the growing season were largely driven by new data coming from commercial facilities according to Honig.
“Those revisions were based pretty much exclusively on updated information we got on the commercial side of things,” Honig explained. “In fact, if you look through the revisions, you’ll see it was all on the off-farm portion of the stock estimate there. And so, we got some updated information in from some of those commercial facilities, and as a result we had to update those numbers with that latest data that we have.”
The December revision followed a similar revision in the September stocks report. Honig said that earlier shift was not from new commercial data, but rather a reevaluation of USDA’s own numbers.
“That wasn’t so much based on updated reporting, but more on once we actually got the ending stocks numbers, that allowed us to kind of look back and make a few adjustments to that previous quarter based on kind of what we were seeing in the balance sheet,” Honig said.
Cotton Yield Drops 86 Pounds in Two Months
Cotton production estimates nosedived at the end of the year with NASS showing a 61-pound yield cut in November followed by a 25-pound reduction in December. Honig said growing season data supported the high numbers but actual ginnings showed a different picture.
“The survey work that we were doing up to that point was still holding strong, and the yields - both the objective yield, so the sample plots we had out in the fields, as well as the reported yields we were getting from producers were staying stronger than what was kind of being bounced around in a lot of the news articles out there. So, we had to stick with the data that we had,” Honig said. “When you get into December, you’ve really got fairly complete ginnings information coming in, and that’s what finally gave us the information we needed to start making those cuts because obviously, every bale of cotton that gets ginned, that’s tracked and reported. And so, once you get far enough into that process, it pretty much dictates what your production levels have to be. And so that’s when we were able to start making those deeper cuts.”
Corn Yield Drops 3.8 bu.
As to the record drop in corn yield, Honig said they had a much larger data set to work with in January compared to November, and it told a very different story.
“That [January yield estimate is} based on post-harvest information we gather from nearly 80,000 producers,” Honig said. “That is the best data that we get ever on yield and it happens at the end of the season. And because it’s after harvest, the sample size is huge. You know, it’s roughly 10 times the sample of producers that we had in November. And so, once you get that information that’s going to drive your yield.”
But harvest was nearly finished in November, so why was the yield number so far off?
“So, the question, though, is why did we not pick up on that sooner And that’s a question we asked ourselves as well,” Honig said. “I’ve gone back through and looked at the data all season long again, to see, you know, did we miss something in the data, but we didn’t. It’s just the data that we had was stronger.”
Honig notes USDA was not alone in that projection.
“One thing I find interesting is if you go back and kind of track those expectations throughout the season, especially once you got to October and November, we were already on the low side of what people were expecting,” he said. “It seems as if nobody really saw it coming that low. And so, you know, it just it’s a head scratcher…The reality is the yields just weren’t there at the end of the day. How it took so long to realize that? I don’t know. But the producers reporting to us all season long didn’t see it either.”
