2003-04 Barley Carryout

[rain]

Charlie AAFC has 2.3 MMT barley carryout for this year. What are your thoughts. I figure it closer to 2.7 as I don't think export expectation will be met. Do you think our use will be 9.147 MMT?

[melvill]

rain, at this very moment, Charlie is working his tail off (or so he says) in Ukraine so he can't answer you're question.

Charlie's last S & D done on May 27, at http://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app21/rtw/selsubj.jsp, shows an 03-04 ending stocks of 1.91 mil. tonnes.

What do you think?

[rain]

melvill

I like charlies number better then AAFC numbers. How long has Charlie been doing this on Roping The Web? How often does he update these number?

Thanks

[melvill]

Alta Ag has been producing those S & Ds for longer than Charlie has been working with us (this time) - probably 20 or 25 years. Of course they weren't on RTW that long. I think he updates them roughly every two months depending on how much newly available stats would influence the absolute numbers

[rain]

The AAFC numbers are very different from the AFRD numbers. Can you give me any idea who has a better track record?

[melvill]

No I can't give you an "accuracy" comparison. Nobody that I know of has done that comparison for either AAFRD or AFRD or Stat Can. In the US companies like Sparks do that kind of analysis of USDA on a regular basis.

As you know S & Ds are very dynamic things - they change a lot from the beginning of the year 'till after the crop year ends as new stats become available. An S & D done at, say, the end of July is likely to be much more "accurate" than one done by anyone the previous February.

Remember that the market place functions on the basis of what the participants believe to be "accurate" not on "what is". For example, a January S & D may have significant market impacts if the market place "believes" it is bang-on. However, the final S & D for that year, based on actual year-end stats, may be quite different.