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WASDE

What is the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report?

Each month USDA forecasts supply and demand for major farm commodities. Forecasts are made for the United States and for the world. They appear as "balance sheets" in which the total supply of a commodity during a marketing year equals the total disposition.

Here's an example of the balance sheet for U.S. corn from the June 12, 1996, World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. The corn marketing year starts September 1 (coinciding with the beginning of the harvest period) and ends on August 30 of the following year.

Ending stocks (supply - use)   657

Ending stocks become the beginning stocks for the balance sheet for the next marketing year.

What commodities are included?

Each monthly report presents revised forecasts of U.S. and world supply and utilization for grains, oilseeds and cotton. It also presents supply and utilization of U.S. red meat, poultry, eggs, milk and refined sugar. Covered grains include world wheat, rice and coarse grains; and U.S. wheat, rice, corn, and U.S. sorghum, barley and oats and total feed grains. Oilseeds include U.S. and world soybeans and world total oilseeds, total oilseed meals and total vegetable oils. Both U.S. and world cotton are forecast.  Meats include beef, pork, and lamb; broilers and turkey.

How is the report organized?

In addition to the balance sheet tables, there are three pages of highlights text and  a three-page table showing the statistical reliability of past forecasts.

How is the report prepared?

Once a month, members of USDA Interagency Commodity Estimates Committee meet overnight in secured "lockup" conditions at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to prepare the report. The Agricultural Statistics Board of the National Agricultural Statistics Service meets within the lockup area at the same time to prepare its monthly Crop Production report.

The Secretary of Agriculture is admitted to the secured area shortly before release time to review and sign the reports of both agencies. Reporters are admitted to the lockup area as well in order to prepare news reports. At 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, the secured area is opened, phones are switched on, and reporters transmit their stories to wire services. The reports are posted electronically on this site and on another Internet site known as the USDA Economics and Statistics System.

Supply and demand estimates are the framework more detailed analyses prepared by the Foreign Agricultural Service and Economic Research Service throughout the year are published in Foreign Agricultural Service Circulars and ERS Outlook and Situation Reports. Each of these publications and other related outlook analyses, numbering more than 200 per year, are cleared by the Board, many at formal interagency meetings. The USDA home page provides a handy  monthly calendar of these reports.

Does the Office of Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis (ORACBA) administer crop insurance programs?

No, crop insurance programs are the responsibility of USDA's Risk Management Agency.

Does ORACBA perform all USDA risk assessments?

No, ORACBA does not perform risk assessments. Risk assessments are done by the individual agencies and reviewed by ORACBA if they relate to a major regulation that concerns human, health, safety or the environment and has an annual economic impact of at least $100 million in 1994 dollars. For such regulations, ORACBA conducts a thorough analysis that makes clear the nature of the risk, alternative ways of reducing it, the reasoning that justifies the proposed rule, and a comparison of the likely costs and benefits of reducing the risk.