The purpose for posting the Production Consensus and Reliability Report is twofold. The first is to see who of the major contributors is consistently accurate, or inaccurate, in their projections year after year. By major contributors I mean those that reach mainstream media. In the past, I have allowed others to contribute because of their assertion that they had knowledge of the data. Inevitably, these contributors always provided numbers that proved to be way off the median of the major contributors. This brings us to the second reason for the report which is to provide the forum of as close as accurate as possible of the true and actual production for a given year. The report has been fairly accurate throughout the years. For ‘20’21 it was off, imo, by 2.5 mm bags, unprecedented. The consensus showed 64.65mm bags and I believe that the actual consensus was around 67mm bags.

For ‘21/‘22 we currently have an average production projection of 56.33mm bags. This is the average of reliable mainstream contributors. Someone in the forum wants to enter a number of 40mm bags on behalf of Maja who has consistently lowballed production estimates throughout the years. To include such a number, which is lower than the current average by 16mm bags would make the consensus unrealistic. So I propose to the forum that we limit a deviation from the median by 10%. So currently we would reject any contributor that is higher than 61.96 or lower than 50.70.

I ask the forum to be the judge. If anyone has a reasonable reason of why we should allow any projections, irregardless of how irrational they may appear, please share. Let’s keep in mind that whatever we say in the forum has absolutely no impact on the market. What we post in the forum is to enrich our individual trading in an honest and useful manner.