Anti-Meat Campaign The number of media articles against consuming meat and poultry is beginning to spike. They cover the range of arguments served up by vegetarian campaigners – bad for the environment, bad for human health, unethical, etc. There are of course counter-arguments but there is no fair and balanced in the American media today. It is unclear how much impact this campaign will have on attitudes and actual meat consumption. While Venezuela, Russia, and China skew media messaging to the government’s position, the media itself performs the censorship in the U.S., with contrarian messengers kicked off Facebook and Twitter. There is unlikely to be an attack on meat from the White House. The progressive left has bee...
What You Need to Know Today: The G7 agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude oil and fuel reserves over four months, with a substantial diesel release front-loaded into the first 20 days. The announcement initially pushed crude oil lower on Friday, although it later recovered a portion o...
In a recent social media post, R-CALF unveiled its latest cattle market plan: “contracts that bind producers before establishing a base price, then tie that price to future negotiated cash transactions, should be prohibited.” That proposal aligns with recent legislation by Represent...
Key Takeaways: The recent pearl-clutching from parts of the beef industry regarding the loss of the daily Kansas fed cattle negotiated trade pricing report is overwrought and ignores the fact that the direction was readily apparent. The shift away from negotiated trade has been well docu...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.