Crop Yield Forecasting

SAGIS releases the following information:
• Monthly Bulletin (MB): This contains one page per commodity with stocks,
producer deliveries, imports, exports and consumption. This is released towards the
end of each month, usually one day before the CEC meetings, in English, Afrikaans,
Tswana and Zulu.
• Weekly Bulletin (WB): This features a collection of local and international information
such as prices, stocks, import parity prices, economic indicators, the food prices of
Statistics SA, and weather conditions. The WB is usually released on the SAGIS
website by the second working day of every week.
• Weekly imports and exports (maize and wheat): This is usually released on the
SAGIS website by the second working day of every week.
• Weekly producer deliveries (maize and wheat): This is usually released on the
SAGIS website by the third working day of every week, per grade for maize and in
total for wheat.
SAGIS’s information is not only used locally for strategic decisions regarding planting
intentions, marketing and stocks, but also internationally, by the International Grains Council
and by other southern African trade partner countries. Furthermore, as already mentioned,
SAGIS’s data on producer deliveries are used in reconciling CEC estimates after the end of
the production season.
Confidentiality
All CEC members are required to sign a confidentiality clause, in which they commit to not
disclose to outside parties any of the information received by the CEC from individual input
providers, and to disclose the official crop estimate only after 15:30 on the day of the CEC
meeting.
Similar to the confidentiality restrictions on CEC members, SAGIS parties are also not allowed
to have any vested interests and must be independent from any party that submits information.
SAGIS must collect information from all the parties that are required by statute to register
with SAGIS. All information received must be processed and evaluated for correctness and
relevancy to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of the information. Both SAGIS and
the CEC members are obliged to treat individuals’ information confidentially and to release
information only as agreed pursuant to consultation with industry stakeholders.
1.4. How do these different forecasts compare? Purpose, coverage,
scale and harmonization issues and accuracy
Although SAGIS was created in 1997, some stakeholders still erroneously believe that SAGIS
calculates crop estimates. Officially, the CEC produces forecasts during the season and
estimates after the season for the total commercially produced crop, irrespective of weather,
including:
• The producer-retained portion on his/her own farm, for animal feed or human
consumption;
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Crop Yield Forecasting: Methodological and Institutional Aspects