USDA Ag Export Forecasts Updated Regularly to Be Accurate

The USDA released their second forecast for U.S. ag exports in the 2018 fiscal year, but even being two months into the year there is a lot of room for change.

Deputy Economist Warren Preston said you can just look at last year for the challenges in forecasting.

“We did have surprising export strength that caused us to raise export projections each quarter.”

Still the 2018 forecast is $500 million behind last year’s numbers, but has already been bumped up by $1 billion from the first projections in August.

Preston said for the 2017 fiscal year, projections started off around $133 billion, but ended up topping $140 billion.

“A lot of that was driven by surprisingly strong late season sales of crops like cotton and soybeans.”

Worldwide projections are showing expected growth and higher demand for agriculture products.