Price Reactions After the Official Release of the NASS Honey Publication

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) conducts hundreds of surveys to make estimates on crops, livestock, production practices, farm economics, etc. Some elements of the agricultural industry ask, “What effects will the publishing of agricultural statistics have on the market of our product?” Markets of agricultural commodities that involve a great deal of speculation have especially wondered about this. In response, NASS publishes two reports (Price Reactions After USDA Crop Reports and Price Reactions After USDA Livestock Reports) showing that the price reactions to the official release of certain NASS publications tend to even out over time. This report examines the honey market which was not covered in NASS’s earlier price reactions studies. The independent price data used in assessing the impact of the NASS publication release were obtained from the National Honey Report published by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) of the USDA. The mean interval estimate determined from the sample of 65 measured price reactions with a confidence level of 95 percent is between -$0.03 and $0.01. The interval is short, includes zero, and is roughly symmetric about zero. A frequency distribution comparison (including a sample mean t-test) also supports this conclusion and suggests that the official release of the NASS Honey publication has no systematic effect on the honey market.