Application of ARIMA Model for Forecasting Agricultural Prices

The overall objective of the present paper is demonstrating the utility of price forecasting of farm prices and validating the same for major crops namely, Paddy, Ragi and Maize in Karnataka state for the year 2016 using the time series data from 2002 to 2016. The results were obtained from the application of univariate ARIMA techniques to produce price forecasts for cereal and precision of the forecasts were evaluated using the standard criteria of MSE, MAPE and Theils U coefficient criteria. The results of ARIMA price forecasts amply demonstrated the power of the ARIMA model as a tool for price forecasting as revealed by pragmatic models of forecasted prices for 2020. The values of MSE, MAPE and Theils U were relatively lower, indicating validity of the forecasted prices of the three crops.