Friend-shoring or moving supply chains closer to being between like-minded nations doesn’t seem like an agriculture issue but it could become one. That is because the sector is increasingly being treated like a strategic asset, and it faces differentiated production standards as regulations begin to mimic industrial approaches for sustainability. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said this week that agriculture should be a part of CFIUS, which would impose geopolitical level restrictions on the sector. In the increasingly bipolar world, Japan, the U.S., and the EU are the most like-minded in the West-based grouping of nations. They comprise 42 percent of global GDP. With about 15 percent of global GDP, China is the lead of the competing blo...
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.