Planting report doesn’t have a clue

Regardless if March arrives with a lion’s roar or a lamb’s bleat, grain and livestock markets will spend each of its days sweating over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s March 30 Prospective Plantings Report.
The report will estimate 2007 U.S. acreage for everything from alfalfa to wrinkled seed peas.
The spotlight, though, for growers and users alike will be on projected corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat planting and what the acre-swapping farmers will do between the crops to maximize income.
Not perfect. While USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service conducts a very scientific survey (“