Balancing Act On the outskirts of the EU’s annual Outlook conference today, Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski stated that there is the need for a “solid impact assessment” of the proposed 50 percent reduction in pesticide usage by 2030. This resulted in immediate pushback by environmental groups who worry that a more complete understanding would mean less of their understanding. The Dutch are not waiting for an official assessment, they are submitting a CAP plan that already has environmentalists angry. Inside the confab, a USDA official was explaining the conundrum: if productivity is not raised, people will starve, and if production practices do not become more environmentally friendly, the earth will be bur...
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.