McDonalds has entered the sustainability space by partnering with Syngenta and paying cattle producers to use Syngenta’s Enogen Trait corn to improve feed efficiency. Enogen corn contains an enzyme, alpha amylase. This enzyme has been added during the ethanol production process to induce starch breakdown. The enzyme makes the breakdown of starch to sugars more efficient. The process was developed in the early 2000. It is kept out of the food stream, though it is approved for food use.Enogen has been marketed for silage production since the mid-2010s in the U.S. and introduced in Canada in 2023 and will be expanded in 2025. Enogen corn feed is about five percent more efficient for backgrounders, stockers, and feeders, than corn without the t...
What You Need to Know Today: There is a global rotation out of tech stocks right now amid profit-taking and expectations of interest rate hikes later this year. The White House said Iran will use its upcoming unsanctioned oil revenue to buy U.S. agricultural products, a claim that Iran later s...
USDA will release its Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report on Thursday. Below are analysts’ estimates for the report. The biggest change since the 1 March report is the number of market hogs, which is expected to be up 1.1 percent from what was implied in March. The percent increase in hogs we...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to -$243/head last week, down $25 from the prior week as higher fed cattle prices more than offset a slight decline in the Choice cutout. The cutout eased to $390/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed to $260/cwt - just of all-time highs - extending the seasonal s...
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.