Planting on New Policy Transfer payments, technocrat speak for taxpayer money given to beneficiaries, amount to around 5 percent of farm income and can only be considered to have marginal impact on planting decisions, but they do have an impact. EU Grains Planting: A Closer Look Grains and oilseeds plantings in the EU tend to be relatively stable. However, crop shifts at member state level can be significant nonetheless, and the impact of such shifts may be greater on the cost side of farming. Increased North American Oilseed Plantings in 2014 USDA is forecasting U.S. soybean plantings to increase by almost 4 percent and the Canadian government is forecasting an 80 percent increase in that country's canola plantings in 2014. Rising Co...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
Key Takeaways: India is excluding sugarcane juice, sugar syrup, and B-heavy molasses from its 2026/27 fuel ethanol procurement program to protect domestic sugar supplies, potentially shifting additional demand toward corn and rice. India’s corn consumption for ethanol has surged from jus...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
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.