An Examination of the USDA Net Cash Farm Income Forecast Reliability using a New Archival Farm Income Dataset: A Case Study of the 2020 Forecasts and Estimates

USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) releases short-term forecasts and estimates of farm sector income three times a year, informing the public on the financial health of the U.S. agriculture sector. This paper presents the new data archive of ERS’s farm sector income forecast and estimate releases and analyzes how forecasts and estimates for a calendar year change over time. We also examine the reliability of the net cash farm income (NCFI) forecasts for the calendar year 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that the fourth release of the 2020 NCFI forecast, published in February 2021, was less reliable than the initial forecast, published in February 2020, contrary to the historical evidence where the reliability of ERS calendar year forecasts tends to improve with each release