I mentioned this below but thought I would put this in a separate thread.

There was quite a bit of media (radio) coverage of Scott Irwin, D Good and D Sander's research report on USDA corn and soybean estimates as well as Glauber's acceptance of the findings..

http://agfax.com/2014/01/23/economists-recommend-improvements-usda-reports/

“They came out with some fairly concrete recommendations, some of them I’m pleased to say I think we can get to work on very quickly,” Glauber said. Other recommendations, like determining the feasibility of a feed use survey for corn, will take more time.

Glauber said USDA requested the inquiry after concerns grew around the Grain Stocks report. Since 2008, more of the reports were followed by limit moves in the futures markets, reflecting the large gaps (sometimes 300 million bushels or more) between what the trade expected and what NASS reported.

He answered a lot of calls from traders and farmers who wondered what was going on. He read the blogs and news articles offering up possible explanations. His team looked into it, but a lot of the articles questioned NASS’ methods and procedures.

“I thought, well, it’s great for us to be looking at this stuff, but let’s bring in some people to do an independent study of it,” he said.

USDA chose Good and Irwin because of their familiarity with the reports and with common arguments about the reports’ accuracy, Glauber said.

Also, Irwin previously did some work for USDA on the price range in WASDE reports. It took a year and a half to conduct the research, and Glauber said he liked the criteria the economists used to narrow down the potential causes of the variation in stocks data. Irwin, Good and Sanders concluded that unusually large, unresolved sampling errors in January Crop Production in 2009, 2010 and 2012 most likely caused distortions in the Grain Stocks report for corn. 

 See more at: http://agfax.com/2014/01/23/economists-recommend-improvements-usda-reports/#sthash.OzHop0V8.dpuf

To which I offer a big TIP of the HAT!!  BRAVO guys..Irwin and Co.. I applaud this and THANK YOU!!!

edit to make this clear:  THANK YOU Mr Glauber and the Staff at USDA!!

see.. Gov't does work..