Last Friday, WPI reported on the status of the appropriations process; Congress has until Friday of this week to pass four appropriations bills, including the one funding agriculture and other agencies. If funding lapses, agencies like USDA will be unable to open on Monday 4 March. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) wants to avoid a shutdown but finds yet another stopgap continuing resolution bill politically unpalatable. One of the remaining hurdles for the agriculture appropriations bill is the creation of a “healthy food” program under SNAP. This has been a proposal coming from Republicans for most of the year, while generally opposed by Democrats. The latest version of the idea is from appropriations subcommitte...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
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.