Accurate USDA Reports Vital for Farmer Decision-Making
TOPICS
NASSFaith Parum, Ph.D.
Deputy Chief Economist
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
photo credit: Arkansas Farm Bureau, used with permission.
Faith Parum, Ph.D.
Deputy Chief Economist
Chad Smith
Associate News Service Editor, NAFB
Two inaccurate USDA reports negatively impacted December corn futures. Chad Smith has more on the errors and corrections to the National Agricultural Statistics Service estimates.
Smith: The September USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, known as NASS, Crop Production Estimates led to some of the largest single-day declines in December corn futures during 2026. But the numbers were not accurate. Faith Parum, the deputy chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, talked about the corrections.
Parum: For corn, specifically in Kansas and Nebraska, this really affected the yield, and it raised September's national production forecast by 28.4 million bushels. If you remember back to September when that report first released, we saw a pretty marked drop in corn production in the United States. This kind of lands more in the middle.
Smith: Parum said the agency has taken steps to ensure these errors don’t happen in future reports.
Parum: USDA has looked back at the September and October reports to make sure there are no more changes in any parts of the report, and they have continued to make sure that they are updating their models to make sure that these errors don't happen in the future.
Smith: The agriculture markets relay on accurate information to support transparent price discovery.
Parum: We're very lucky and blessed in the United States to have an agricultural statistics service. Obviously, farmers make production, financing, and marketing decisions based on all of these expectations in the report. So, any efforts to make those more reliable, more accurate, are going to be really great for farmers and ranchers.
Smith: For more information on the NASS errors and eventual revisions, go to the Farm Bureau Intel page at fb.org. Chad Smith, Washington.
