date:Jul 31, 2012
ovember with final estimates released in January. Because yield forecasts are limited by crop maturity and are influenced by subsequent weather, the August yield forecasts tend to have the largest deviation from the final estimates released in January. For the period 1970 through 2010, the August yield forecast for corn ranged from an overestimate of 18.3 percent to an underestimate of 10.1 percent. The middle 50 percent of the forecast errors ranged from an over-estimate of 1.3 percent to an un