Download or read book Using Usda Forecasts to Estimate the Price Flexibility of Demand for Agricultural Commodities written by Michael Adjemian and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We estimate the general equilibrium price flexibility of demand for corn and soybeans using monthly changes in expected supply published by the USDA. Our estimates reflect the demand response to a one-year supply shock and thus correspond to the inverse demand elasticity. We derive the conditions under which our estimates are consistent, and we show how demand flexibility varies by season, inventory, time horizon, and demand composition. At average inventory and without accounting for corn-ethanol use, we obtain price flexibility estimates of -1.35 and -1.03 for corn and soybeans, respectively. Current corn-ethanol production levels are associated with much larger absolute flexibilities for both commodities.

Download or read book Agricultural Product Prices written by William G. Tomek and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Principles of price determination. Price differences and variability. Princing institutions. Introduction to empirical price analysis.

Download or read book Incorporating Uncertainty Into USDA Commodity Price Forecasts written by Michael Adjemian and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1977 through April 2019, USDA published monthly season-average price (SAP) forecasts for key agricultural commodities in the form of intervals meant to indicate forecasters' uncertainty but without attaching a confidence level. In May 2019, USDA eliminated the intervals and began publishing a single point estimate--a value that has a very low probability of being realized. We demonstrate how a density forecasting format can improve the usefulness of USDA price forecasts and explain how such a methodology can be implemented. We simulate 21)years of out-of-sample density-based SAP forecasts using historical data, with forward-looking, backward-looking, and composite methods, and we evaluate them based on commonly-accepted criteria. Each of these approaches would offer USDA the ability to portray richer and more accurate price forecasts than its old intervals or its current single point estimates. Backward-looking methods require little data and provide significant improvements. For commodities with active derivatives markets, option-implied volatilities (IVs) can be used to generate forward-looking and composite models that reflect (and adjust dynamically to) market sentiment about uncertainty--a feature that is not possible using backward-looking data alone. At certain forecast steps, a composite method that combines forward- and backward-looking information provides useful information regarding farm-level prices beyond that contained in IVs.

Download or read book USDA s Commodity Program written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Global Agricultural Supply and Demand written by Ronald Trostle and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World market prices for major food commodities such as grains and vegetable oils have risen sharply to historic highs of more than 60% above levels just 2 years ago. Many factors have contributed to the runup in food commodity prices. Some factors reflect trends of slower growth in production and more rapid growth in demand that have contributed to a tightening of world balances of grains and oilseeds over the last decade. Other factors include increased global demand for biofuels feedstocks and adverse weather conditions in 2006 and 2007 in some major grain- and oilseed-producing areas. This report discusses these and other factors and illustrates how they have contributed to food commodity price increases. Tables and graphs.

Download or read book Forecasting the pric written by and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book USDA Commodity Forecasts written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Evaluating USDA Agricultural Forecasts written by Siddhartha S. Bora and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The timely availability of accurate forecasts plays a vital role in informing decisions by farm sector stakeholders. In this dissertation, I evaluate the rationality, accuracy, and informativeness of a range of agricultural forecasts and projections published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies and examine ways to improve them. The findings have implications for future revisions of the forecasting processes and for policymakers, agricultural businesses, and other stakeholders who use these forecasts. In Chapter 1, I show that some of the reported biases and inefficiencies in USDA forecasts may be due to an asymmetric loss of the forecaster. Many previous studies suggest that many USDA forecasts are biased and/or inefficient. These findings, however, may be the result of the assumed loss function of USDA forecasters. I test the rationality of the USDA net cash income forecasts and the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) production and price forecasts between 1988-2018 using a flexible multivariate loss function that allows for asymmetric loss and non-separable forecast errors. My results provide robust evidence that USDA forecasters are rational expected loss minimizers yet demonstrate a tendency to place a greater weight on under- or over-prediction. As a result, this study provides an alternate interpretation of previous findings of forecast irrationality. Agricultural baselines play an important role in shaping agricultural policy by providing information about the farm sector for a ten-year horizon, yet these projections have not been rigorously evaluated. In Chapter 2, I evaluate the accuracy and informativeness of two widely used baselines for the US farm sector published by the USDA and the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) in three steps. First, I examine the average percent errors of the projections and perform tests of bias. Second, I use a novel testing framework based on the encompassing principle to test the predictive content of the projections for each horizon, determining the longest informative projection horizon. Third, I compare the USDA and FAPRI baseline projections using a multi-horizon framework that considers all projection horizons jointly. I find that prediction error and bias increase with the horizon’s length. The predictive content of the baselines projections for most variables diminishes after 4-5 years. The multi-horizon comparison suggests that neither USDA nor FAPRI projections have uniform or average superior predictive ability over the other for most variables. Multi-step forecasts about commodity market indicators play an important role in informing policy and investment decisions by governments and market participants. In Chapter 3, I examine whether the accuracy of long-term forecasts can be improved using deep learning models. I first formulate a supervised learning problem and set benchmarks for forecast accuracy. I train a set of deep neural networks on a training sample and measure their performance against the benchmark model on a test sample using a walk-forward validation strategy. I find that while the USDA baseline projections perform better for the shorter horizon, the performance of the deep neural networks improves for the longer forecast horizons.

Download or read book Agricultural Prices and Commodity Market Analysis written by John N. Ferris and published by McGraw-Hill Science, Engineering & Mathematics. This book was released on 1998 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book emphasizes market and price analysis using agricultural examples. The focus of the book is on the application of econometrics and will help those going into fields involving market analysis and forecasting. The blend of theory and application is unique.

Download or read book Methods to Analyse Agricultural Commodity Price Volatility written by Isabelle Piot-Lepetit and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the issue of price volatility in agricultural commodities markets and how this phenomenon has evolved in recent years. The factors underlying the price spike of 2007-08 appear to be global and macroeconomic in nature, including the rapid growth in demand by developing countries, the international financial crisis, and exchange rate movements. Some of these factors are new, appearing as influences on price volatility only in the last decade. Although volatility has always been a feature of agricultural commodity markets, the evidence suggests that volatility has increased in certain commodity markets. A growing problem is that agricultural price shocks and volatility disrupt agricultural markets, economic incentives and incomes. With increased globalization and integration of financial and energy markets with agricultural commodity markets, the relationships between markets are expanding and becoming more complex. When a crisis such as a regional drought, food safety scare or a financial crisis hits a particular market, policy-makers often do not know the extent to which it will impact on other markets and affect producer, consumer and trader decisions. Including contributions from experts at the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the USDA, and the European Commission, the research developed throughout the chapters of this book is based on current methodologies that can be used to analyze price volatility and provide directions for understanding this volatility and the development of new agricultural policies. The book highlights the challenges facing policy makers in dealing with the changing nature of agricultural commodities markets, and offers recommendations for anticipating price movements and managing their consequences. It will be a practical guide for both present and future policy-makers in deciding on potential price-stabilizing interventions, and will also serve as a useful resource for researchers and students in agricultural economics.

Download or read book Agriculture Handbook written by and published by . This book was released on 1954 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set includes revised editions of some issues.

Download or read book Information Rigidity in USDA Production Forecasts written by Raghav Goyal and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USDA invests significant public resources into developing its crop projection reports. These publications inform decisions across the supply chain. Several previous studies find that revisions to the department's production and yield forecasts for major agricultural commodities are positively correlated, and conclude that they deviate from what would be observed under rational expectations, possibly due to smoothing on the part of forecasters. Yet correlated revisions may also be explained by information rigidities that cause forecasts to be infrequently or only partially updated. We apply a recently-developed test to these USDA revisions for corn, soybeans, and wheat and find no significant evidence that USDA crop production forecasts are smoothed, strategically. Rather, we show that information rigidities are the more likely culprit, due to production and yield information that is either too costly to obtain or too noisy. Our results demonstrate that data challenges--not models--are the main source of inefficiency in USDA projections, and that the Department can improve the efficiency of its forecasts by making investments that improve its access to crop data, perhaps through crop-monitoring satellite and remote sensing technology.

Download or read book Price Determination in Agricultural Commodity Markets written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report provides a general description of price determination in major U.S. agricultural commodity markets for wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, and cotton. Understanding the fundamentals of commodity market price formation is critical to evaluating the potential effects of government policies and programs (existing or proposed), as well as of trade agreements that may open U.S. borders to foreign competitors. In addition, an understanding of the interplay of market forces over time contributes to flexibility in making policy for what may be short-term market phenomena. The general price level of an agricultural commodity, whether at a major terminal, port, or commodity futures exchange, is influenced by a variety of market forces that can alter the current or expected balance between supply and demand. Many of these forces emanate from domestic food, feed, and industrial-use markets and include consumer preferences and the changing needs of end users; factors affecting the production processes (e.g., weather, input costs, pests, diseases, etc.); relative prices of crops that can substitute in either production or consumption; government policies; and factors affecting storage and transportation. International market conditions are also important depending on the "openness" of a country's domestic market to international competition, and the degree to which a country engages in international trade. A distinguishing feature of U.S. commodity markets is the importance of futures markets. Unlike cash markets which deal with the immediate transfer of goods, a futures market is based on buying (or selling) commodity contracts at a fixed price for potential physical delivery at some future date. A futures exchange provides the facilities for buyers and sellers to trade commodity futures contracts openly, and reports any market transactions to the public. As a result of this activity, futures markets function as a central exchange for domestic and international market information and as a primary mechanism for price discovery, particularly for storable agricultural commodities with seasonal production patterns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plays a critical role in monitoring and disseminating agricultural market information. Commodity markets rely heavily on USDA reports for guidance on U.S. and international supply and demand conditions. The release of USDA supply and demand estimates has the potential to substantially alter market expectations about current and future commodity market conditions and are, therefore, closely watched by market participants. In general, certain characteristics of agricultural product markets set them apart from most non-agricultural product markets and tend to make agricultural product prices more volatile than are the prices of most nonfarm goods and services. Three such noteworthy characteristics of agricultural crops include the seasonality of production, the derived nature of their demand, and generally price-inelastic demand and supply functions. In addition, wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, and cotton each have certain unique structural characteristics that further differentiate the nature of market price formation from each other. This report will be updated as conditions warrant.

Download or read book Local Food Systems Concepts Impacts and Issues written by Steve Martinez and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

Download or read book Issues in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics 2013 Edition written by and published by ScholarlyEditions. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics: 2013 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ book that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Agricultural Economics. The editors have built Issues in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics: 2013 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Agricultural Economics in this book to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics: 2013 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Download or read book The Economics of Food Price Volatility written by Jean-Paul Chavas and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The conference was organized by the three editors of this book and took place on August 15-16, 2012 in Seattle."--Preface.

Download or read book Running a Food Hub Volume Two a Business Operations Guide written by James Matson and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is part of a multi-volume technical report series entitled, Running a Food Hub, with this guide serving as a companion piece to other United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports by providing in-depth guidance on starting and running a food hub enterprise. In order to compile the most current information on best management and operations practices, the authors used published information on food hubs, surveyed numerous operating food hubs, and pulled from their existing experience and knowledge of working directly with food hubs across the country as an agricultural business consulting firm. The report’s main focus is on the operational issues faced by food hubs, including choosing an organizational structure, choosing a location, deciding on infrastructure and equipment, logistics and transportation, human resources, and risks. As such, the guide explores the different decision points associated with the organizational steps for starting and implementing a food hub. For some sections, sidebars provide “decision points,” which food hub managers will need to address to make key operational decisions. This illustrated guide may assist the operational staff at small businesses or third-party organizations that may provide aggregation, marketing, and distribution services from local and regional producers to assist with wholesale, retail, and institution demand at government institutions, colleges/universities, restaurants, grocery store chains, etc. Undergraduate students pursuing coursework for a bachelor of science degree in food science, or agricultural economics may be interested in this guide. Additionally, this reference work will be helpful to small businesses within the food trade discipline.