Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE). An overview of the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment and the outlook for a satellite crop inventory

The author has identified the following significant results. The most important LACIE finding was that the technology worked very well in estimating wheat production in important geographic locations. Based on working through the many successes and shortcomings of LACIE, it can be stated with confidence that: (1) the current technology can successfully monitor what production in regions having similar characteristics to those of the U.S.S.R. wheat areas and the U.S. hard red winter wheat areas; (2) with additional applied research, significant improvements in capabilities to monitor wheat in these and other important production regions can be expected in the near future; (3) the remote sensing and weather effects modeling technology approached used by LACIE is generally applicable to other major crops and crop-producing regions of the world; and (4) with suitable effort, this technology can now advance rapidly and could be widespread use in the late 1980's

The Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE). Methodology for area, yield and production estimation, results and perspective

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

The Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE). An application of remote sensing by multispectral scanners

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

The Tactical and Strategic Value of Commodity Futures

Historically, commodity futures have had excess returns similar to those of equities. But what should we expect in the future? The usual risk factors are unable to explain the time-series variation in excess returns. In addition, our evidence suggests that commodity futures are an inconsistent, if not tenuous, hedge against unexpected inflation. Further, the historically high average returns to a commodity futures portfolio are largely driven by the choice of weighting schemes. Indeed, an equally weighted long-only portfolio of commodity futures returns has approximately a zero excess return over the past 25 years. Our portfolio analysis suggests that the a long-only strategic allocation to commodities as a general asset class is a bet on the future term structure of commodity prices, in general, and on specific portfolio weighting schemes, in particular. In contrast, we provide evidence that there are distinct benefits to an asset allocation overlay that tactically allocates using commodity futures exposures. We examine three trading strategies that use both momentum and the term structure of futures prices. We find that the tactical strategies provide higher average returns and lower risk than a long-only commodity futures exposure.