By Karl Plume and Julie Ingwersen

CHICAGO (Reuters) -A crop data blackout during the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown has led to the widest range of analyst estimates in a decade for corn and soybean yields, as an information vacuum at harvest time and during critical trade negotiations distorted the market for the country’s two most valuable crops.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is set to release a hotly anticipated crop report including the government’s first estimates of the two feed crops since mid-September, before the harvest had taken shape. In the absence of last month’s world agriculture supply and demand estimates report, traders have relied on disparate bits of data to take positions.

Buyers and analysts have examined harvest estimates from private forecas

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