Forecasting Cotton Acreage

The problem of forecasting social phenomena is one that economists have undertaken with varying degrees of success for a good many years. On the whole, agricultural forecasting in the past few years has been fairly successful. From September, 1924 to the latter part of 1928, the forecasts published in the monthly price situation of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, according to Dr. O.C. Stine, were about 87 per cent and the price forecasts in the outlook reports of the Bureau up to that time about 90 per cent correct. A few of the State agricultural colleges also had been making agricultural forecasts with about the same degree of accuracy. Since then the record has probably not been quite so good because of developments in business conditions which economists generally had not learned to forecast with accuracy equal to that developed in forecasting supplies of agricultural products or the influences on prices of changes in such supplies.In order to improve our forecasting technique it is necessary to do intensive research and make careful analyses of what has happened in the past and, by applying economic principles and statistical methods, determine what is likely to happen in the future. Studies pertaining to the problems of forecasting are relatively young compared with researches in the physical and biological sciences. Most of the work on forecasting economic events has been done within the past ten years. Considerable progress has been made, but there is yet a long way to go.