09/11/07 Crop report

The US Department of Agriculture will release the Crop Production Report tomorrow. Last month USDA gave us the anticipated production numbers. Jeff Geuder with National Ag Statistics Service says they have just received crop information from twelve thousand farmers. GEUDER "And that survey we actually have enumerators who go out into the fields to count the plants, count the fruit, weigh the fruit depending on the stage of maturity and they'll measure the ears, they'll count the pods depending on what the crop is and the stage of maturity is and that gives us a much better idea of what the yield is going to be than we had a month ago when the crop was not as mature." Idaho and all the other states collect information from farmers and prepare a report on crop yields and production. GEUDER "They send the information into us here in Washington in an encrypted form. On Wednesday the twelfth early in the morning we will lock the doors, cut off the phones and computers and everything and then we will bring in that information, decrypt it and that's when we sit down and do our own analysis of the information." He says the average difference between the forecast and actual production for corn is about five and a half percent and sometimes is even closer than that. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott