Revisiting the Crop Production Report

[voltzman]

   I was thumbing through the 10/13/2019 report, looking at corn production estimates.   To make this short, the NASS people put ear count at 28200/acre in 2019 vs 29100/acre in 2018.   Percentagewise, the ear count this year is 3.1% less than last year.   The harvested acreage is put at about 75000 less than a year ago or around 12/13 million less total bushels than last year at 168.4/acre so mathematically not much difference.  The percentage of 2019 production vs 2018 production is 168.4/176.4 or 95.5% or 4.5% less bushel/acre.   Subtracting 3.1% from 4.5% leaves the effective yield loss vs a year ago of 1.4% or about 2.5 bushels/acre.

   Also, Nass put maturity of their sample plots at 29% this year vs an average of +/- 70%.  ( BTW, 29% maturity was the number on the 9/22 Crop Progress Report.)   The overall ear count remained the same from Sept to Oct.

   After factoring out the lower ears/acre and given all of the problems with this year's crop, I find it hard to believe that a 2.5 bushel loss vs a year ago is plausible.   I'm not so sure that NASS could give a good yield estimate this year given the late maturity vs last year, if they even tried.   If they did go out to the plots, I think the analysts/agronomists saying that the later planted, shorter season hybrids will yield less has merit and that should show up in November.

   After the freezes and snow in the NW cornbelt, final yield is anyone's guess-N Dak and S Dak are listed as producing over 1.1 billion bushels of corn in Oct Report.   Just some musings

[BA Deere]

I think even if there`s a long Indian Summer and the DeKodies get harvested after the melt they have to trim 200 million bushel of corn production off and Lord only knows what beans sitting in 2 feet of snow will look like.  I heard some early bean yields out there was 65, with their cheaper land costs if they could bring it all across the finishline, they`d make all kinds of money.

[sw363535]

Thanks Voltz,   Good effort.  Since there is a 25% variable. (conservatively)  in usda yield and again in acres(2019 especially).  They just need to give us real numbers.   Good thoughts.  

all considered I think the variability is probably close to that 25-30 % this time. 

Worse than that we are seeing that much variability or more within a field yield.  All way south of a normal yield.  Beans and corn.  Short cold season means soil quality is critical.  Sandy souls are yielding very poorly.