Last summer, Jim McGivney watched corn prices plummet as ethanol demand fell and crop reports pointed to a 16 billion-bushel crop. “I was looking to 2021 and worried that if a vaccine wasn’t developed, how was I going to be able to market my corn? You can’t rent land here at $3.25 per bushel,” says the northwestern Illinois farmer.
“It was a big crop all summer long until those September USDA reports.”
McGivney was hardly the only farmer in America perplexed by USDA’s abrupt revisions last fall. It seemed to many that markets were being taken on a wild ride, driven in large part by government reports.