Forecasting the U.S. season-average farm price of corn: Derivation of an alternative futures-based forecasting model

An alternative futures-based procedure is developed to forecast the season-average farm price for U.S. corn, an under-researched price forecast. The new method performs similarly or better than two widely-watched season-average price forecasts, i.e., the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates and the Hoffman futures-based forecasts, at the beginning of the post-harvest season and just as well as those forecasts in most of the other months during the marketing year. We attribute the robust performance of the proposed forecast to its ability to use heterogeneous coefficients for futures and cash prices depending on the underlying market conditions. Improved performance of the proposed forecasts is especially noticeable when the market is more volatile. Overall, the method derived in this study complements the existing forecasts and provides valuable information for decision-makers.