The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) is having its summer business meeting in San Diego this week. While all the expected topics are on the table for discussion, one has risen to prominence: trade. Frustration with the Biden trade agenda has been building for some time, especially as market access agreements turn to more vague cooperative frameworks and the impact of imports into the U.S., especially on wages. News reports quoted NCBA’s vice president of government affairs saying, “It is absolutely unconscionable that the Trade Representative of the United States, Katherine Tai, made comments in the last few weeks that it is no longer an objective of this administration to work on exports.” Note that las...
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.