World Perspectives

India Needs Fruit and Vegetable Imports

Unfavorable weather this past summer caused a shortfall in food production that is now reverberating through the Indian economy. Food comprises half of India’s consumer price index and the cost of vegetables in this global number one vegetarian market has reportedly skyrocketed 61 percent.  India, which has four times the population as the U.S. but just 28 percent of the arable land available per capita, nonetheless imports only a small fraction of the fruits and vegetables as the U.S. (see table below). India has 11 times as many vegetarians in its population as the U.S., yet it imports just 0.21 percent of the vegetables imported by the U.S. and just 3.46 percent the per capita volume of fruit imports.  India employs hig...

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Markets opened today pretty much where they ended in the overnight and pretty much stayed that way all day, which is to say in the red. And it did so pretty much across the board on lower volume. There was just not any real change in the story of impending big U.S. crops arriving on top of big...

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feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Summary of Futures

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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.

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