Public Health New COVID-19 Cases and Related Deaths Continue to Rise With shutdowns and movement restrictions in place across major metropolitan areas in China, the Omicron wave is wreaking havoc. New cases for the past month now total just over 1.05 million, while COVID-19 related deaths have risen to 6,078 from 5,622 for the previous 30-day period. The seven-day mortality rate has retreated from 284/day last week to 241/day, while the seven-day average case count is down to 18,376 cases from 27,291 cases from a week ago. This follows a typical trend with the novel coronavirus and its variant offspring, where daily cases peak and daily deaths reach their highpoint before receding as public health measures take effect. Still, the tr...
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.