Pre-harvest Forecasting of County Wheat Yield and Wheat Quality Conditional on Weather Information.pdf

1? ? Pre-harvest Forecasting of County Wheat Yield and Wheat Quality Conditional on Weather Information ? ? ? ? Byoung-Hoon Lee Graduate Research Assistant Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK 74078 bh.lee@ Philip Kenkel Professor and Fitzwater Chair for Cooperative Studies Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University 516 Agricultural Hall Stillwater, OK 74078 phil.kenkel@ B. Wade Brorsen Regents Professor and Jean Patsy Neustadt Chair Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University 414 Agricultural Hall Stillwater, OK 74078 wade.brorsen@ ? ? ? ? ? Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the Southern Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Corpus Christi Texas, February 5-8, 2011. ? ? ? ? Copyright 2011 by Byoung-Hoon Lee, Philip Kenkel, and B. Wade Brorsen. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purpose by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. ? ? 2? ? Abstract: Wheat regression models that account for the effect of weather are developed to forecast wheat yield and quality. Spatial lag effects are included. Wheat yield, protein, and test weight level are strongly influenced by weather variables. The forecasting power of the yield and protein models was enhanced by adding the spatial lag effect. Out of sample forecasting tests confirm the models’ usefulness in accounting for the variations in average wheat yield and qualities. ? ? Key words: prediction, protein, spatial lag, test weight, weather, wheat yield 3? ? 1. Introduction Winter wheat production in the Southern Plains is a mostly dry land crop with substantial year-to-year variation in yields and quality due to rainfall, temperature and other weather events. If wheat yield and wheat quality response to weather conditions could be predicted early and accurately, the inform