Forecasting the quarterly production of rice and corn in the Philippines: A time series analysis

Abstract

Rice and corn are crops that are produced on most of the agricultural areas in the Philippine geographic territory. Gathered from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the quarterly volume of total production of the mentioned crops will be predicted using Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) Modelling through a Box-Jerkins method of forecasting. Investigators aims to forecast rice production and Corn production actual observed in the next 5 years of data, particularly in years mentioned. Obtaining models through SARIMA method, for rice production is SARIMA (2 1 8) (1 1 0)4 and for Corn production would be SARIMA (3 1 8) (0 1 1)4. Results suggest that two models have satisfactorily fitted their specified series and diagnostic checking for models' accuracy. The dynamically forecasted values of both series were following the trend pattern of the past values of their allotted observed values which were going on an upward direction indicating favourable outcome for the study. This may help people for better understanding the possible changes in values of the data series gathered and may even help the government for any reforms they can make for the upward mobility of production of crops, in agriculture and especially, economy of the country.