Food inflation continues to be a hot topic. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the consumer price index (CPI) for September. The food index was up 0.9 percent in September, after increasing 0.4 percent in August. On an annualized basis, monthly food inflation in September would be 10.8 percent. Since September 2020 however, food prices are up 4.6 percent; that breaks down to food at home up 4.5 percent and food away from home at 4.7 percent. Restaurants were the final category of overall retailers to move back above February 2020 sales levels, and that didn’t happen until April 2021. Compared to February 2020, restaurant sales are now up 9.3 percent. Since 2015, the food away from home (restaurant s...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.