Editors' Notebook

I'm not sure there's ever been a more contentious debate about an upcoming crop season as the one we're now mulling over.

DTN followers and attendees at some of our spring outlook presentations will know Senior Analyst Darin Newsom and Senior Ag Meteorologist Bryce Anderson are just a tad pessimistic about the coming crop season. Newsom continues to watch the market spreads in nearby and deferred-month contracts. Those continue to show the winds continuing to blow to the tight supply side.

Anderson and his team of meteorologists have their eyes on the Pacific Ocean, which to date is offering little to bolster the thought that the rain tap is about to crank open and replenish soil profiles across the Corn Belt.

If you want to see steam come out of either of their sets of ears just start talking about "trend-line corn yields." Certainly, Newsom and Anderson would agree, as any knowledgeable person would, that with timely rains a solid corn crop can be had. They just don't see corn yields in the 160s as remotely possible as of mid-February.

But if you read our or others' reports from the USDA outlook meeting in Washington, D.C., this past week, we're on the verge of another massive crop come November. Lots of acres, good chance of timely rains, and harvest corn prices moving according. Palmer Drought index be darned.

USDA -- the farmer's agency -- practically has to remain true to their main constituency every upcoming season. And true enough, a farmer's hope had better spring eternal or it can get pretty depressing out there after a dozen or four springs under your belt.

Optimism is one thing. Public predictions based on hard-number models is entirely different, and this year USDA is pushing pretty hard that it has the historical data to back up its "our glass is way more than half full" outlook.

We'll be digging in to where USDA numbers are coming from, with a weigh-in from our team of weather and markets experts. We also have our favorite grain statistician, Joel Karlin, sorting out the R-squareds on rainfall, Palmer Drought Index ratings and the like and the effect on subsequent yields.

We all know that Mother Nature, she can be blind when it comes to statistical charts. Yet barring the invention of the time machine, historical data is what we have to work with. If anyone can find a mathematical hole in the USDA models, or support for them, Karlin will. So in addition to the ongoing market, weather and news reports on the upcoming season, I encourage you to also follow his posts in the "Fundamentally Speaking" blog in the coming days and weeks.

And I promise you, everyone in this news room knows and appreciates how serious are the stakes. How much crop to price ahead, how many bushels can you feel comfortable about bringing in, and where crop insurance and other risk management tools fit in the mix -- they're all highest priority items for the DTN news and analysis team this year. Lots of organizations can report whatever someone said publically, quote some unchecked facts and throw out hollow predictions. That's never been the DTN way, and certainly won't be the way this year.

(CZ)

© Copyright 2013 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.