Cotton Terrorism Domestic agricultural subsidies distort markets and thus cause a multitude of harms. However, none seems worse than the overproduction of cotton in rich countries that adversely impacts farmers in the “cotton-four” West African countries. Nonetheless, they are part of a much larger and more complex array of distorting policies and practices that defy a cherry-picking approach to reform. It also doesn’t help to exaggerate their impact. Speaking on behalf of the cotton-four, Mali Prime Minister Abdoulaye Idrissa Maiga charged that rich country cotton subsidies are “promoting the growth of extremists.” Cotton is not the source of religious intolerance in Muslim West Africa. Cultural Shippi...
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.