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| Agree with SC. These are the numbers we work with and the market trades with. I have no reason outside of the "loss of faith" that DJM and others mention to think that the numbers are intentionally manipulated. BUT, and isn't there always a but...What confuses me most is the way the "surveys" are conducted. I receive in the mail several times a year a "voluntary" report to fill out to garner info for these crop reports. Of course, as 99% of all farmers do, when I see voluntary, it is filed in the round recepticle immediately. Then, a couple of weeks later, a nice person calls me on the phone during family time and asks me to conduct the phone survey for USDA or NASS or our state's version KASS. I no longer answer these surveys, not because I do not appreciate their efforts of getting an accurate report, but because I am dismayed that they still rely on phone surveys from farmers when they have all of the so called "sophisticated" means to do the measurements.
Solution:
For production: Nearly all farmers turn in insurance yields. USE THESE NUMBERS. Al of my fall production was turned into my agent by Nov 30th. A correction could be used for those acres still in the field and that could be clearly stated on the crop report.
For Acres: Again, instead of phone surveys, all planted acres are reported on all insured acres, which are most all acres anyway. Shouldn't be too hard to add up the acres. If that isn't satisfactory, satellites do a wonderful job of scanning our earth's surface and could easily be used to get accurate figures.
(Interesting side note: my sister is working on her phD in mathematics and her research involves correlating the pixels on computer to get accurate measures of crop development from satellite images. Obviously, the gene pool favored her over me.)
Then, those responsible for the reports can be held to a high level of accountability. Maybe these tactics are already employed, don't know. But, could it really be that simple???
From northwest Kansas...make it a great Day!
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One More Time
