USDA Trying To Catch Up On Weekly Reports

The partial government shutdown resulted in almost a complete halt in USDA commodity reports and forecasts.

"So, trade to me has been very cautious and very limited because there's not been a lot to trade on," said USDA's outlook board chairman Seth Meyer.

For example, he noted, two reports that traders look for are the daily and weekly export sales numbers which were not published during the shutdown.  Meyer said we've had data on what commodities were inspected, sold, and shipped already.

"But we don't know what's been sold and still on the books. Because that hasn't been reported. That information now has to be compiled and reported."

Here's how the USDA's foreign agricultural service plans to do that.   It's resumed daily reporting now, but expects the report for the week ending December 20th to come out Thursday this week, and the week ending December 27th coming Thursday next week and so on, until February 22nd when they publish a combined report for the 6 weeks ending between January 10th through February 14th.  Then they'll be caught up and start reporting on a regular basis.

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