Macroeconomics Food Prices See Biggest Jump in Nearly Two Years Not since September 2020 has the average cost of food in China risen by more than 3 percent on an annualized basis. That nearly changed this past June as food prices rose in aggregate by 2.9 percent from a year ago. That marked three straight months of increases as the combination of rising food and feedstuff costs worldwide coupled with Beijing’s drive to eliminate COVID-19 outbreaks through the use of stringent lockdown measures created quite the shock to consumer purchasing power. Leading the cost increase among the different food groupings were fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, eggs, milk, and cooking oils, which saw annualized upticks of 19 percent, 3.7 percent, 6.5 p...
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.