News

USDA crop condition ratings useful for projecting yield

Agriculture economist Scott Irwin says market stakeholders should start giving more attention to USDA corn and soybean condition ratings.

“Soon,” Irwin told Brownfield Ag News.  “Not quite now, but soon.”

Irwin – at the University of Illinois – says USDA crop condition ratings – the percentage of the crop that’s very poor, poor, fair, good or excellent – are useful in projecting crop yield.

“You just plug in this week’s good plus excellent ratings, and out pops a yield forecast,” said Irwin.  “You don’t know too much from doing that until about mid-June, and then progressively those forecasts are going to get better and better as you go through the season.”

Despite some opinions that the weekly USDA ratings reports are not accurate, Irwin says analyzing them objectively results in a useful tool for marketing.

“This is indeed very valuable information to the marketplace and to farmers,” he said.  “I like to call the crop condition system our early warning radar for crop prospects.”

The condition ratings are reported weekly on Brownfield radio stations and on brownfieldagnews.com.

AUDIO: Scott Irwin (5 min. MP3)