This study sought to determine whether monthly revisions of U.S. Department
of Agriculture current-year corn and soybean yield forecasts are correlated
and whether this correlation is associated with crop size. An
ex-ante measure of crop size based on percent deviation
of the current estimate from out-of-sample trend is used in efficiency tests
based on the Nordhaus framework for fixed-event forecasts. Results show that
available information about crop size is generally efficiently incorporated
in these forecasts. Thus, although this pattern may appear obvious to market
analysts in hindsight, it is largely based on new information and hence
difficult to anticipate.