The profitability of U.S. meat producers and the utility of U.S. meat consumers are impacted by the trade of meat. USDA publishes the most prominent publicly available meat trade projections. This study finds USDA projections typically underpredict meat export volumes and overpredict meat import volumes. USDA projections outperform naïve projections for beef and pork exports, but naïve projections at times outperform USDA projections for chicken exports and beef and pork imports, especially at shorter horizons. USDA projections exclude variety cuts, which comprise a sizeable share of beef and pork exports. There remains room for improvement in projecting U.S. meat trade.

This study examines the accuracy of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) crop Acreage and Production forecasts for corn, soybeans, and winter wheat relative to their private counterparts over 1970–2019. Our main findings suggest that USDA forecasts often had significantly smaller errors than their private counterparts. The accuracy of both USDA and private forecasts has improved over time, but the accuracy of USDA forecasts has improved more than that of private forecasts, maintaining the USDA’s relative accuracy advantage. The accuracy advantage of Prospective Plantings and Acreage reports highlights the importance of survey-based approaches used for these forecasts.