Predictions

Everybody wants their future told. Go to any meeting on dairy and there will be no shortage of predictions about what the future of dairy prices will be.

However, just how good are the experts? While we may not know how good dairy experts are, no one has done any scientific study, there have been scientists study the accuracy of expert predictions. In the mid-1980s psychologist Philip Tetlock assembled a group of 284 political experts to make nearly 100 predictions each about a variety of possible future events. Twenty years later, he published the results. The experts did not perform any better then minimally sophisticated statistical model.

Other studies have come to the same conclusion. Experts are not very good at predictions, however, few people verify the predictions experts make.

Presently, there are so many balls in the air and any one of them or several of them might drop. Therefore, predictions about future dairy prices are virtually meaningless.