Macroeconomics Food Prices See Their Smallest Increase n Nine Months The Year of the Rabbit kicked off with a sharp reduction in food inflation, as the average cost was up just 2.6 percent in February from a year ago. The oversupply of live hogs has resulted in a sharp correction to pork prices, which rose last month by just 3.9 percent year-on-year. Similarly, the cost of fresh vegetables climbed by a mere 3.8 percent after an uptick in January of 6.7 percent. The other major categories also seeing a slowing in rising costs include fresh fruit, milk, eggs, and cooking oil, which were up from a year ago by 8.5 percent, 1.5 percent, 7.8 percent, and 6.4 percent, respectively. Along with the costs of food, consumer prices for o...
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.