Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA In Bangladesh, the “advanced income tax” on wheat imports has been lifted due to importers declaring much of their wheat as “duty-free” durum wheat. The tax had been 5 percent on ordinary wheat but nothing on durum wheat. The change in the tax is not retroactive so there will be no refunds on taxes paid or due on recent wheat imports. Turkey reports that its main grain producing area – the Konya plain – is suffering greatly from a lack of rainfall. The Konya area produces about 2.5 MMT of grain per year, mainly wheat, and this year rainfall is down by 60 percent since July. With only 10 percent of the area under irrigation, rainfall is neede...
Weather concerns and the impacts of the war in Iran helped push wheat and corn to sharp gains Tuesday, with both markets blowing past key technical resistance levels. The weather is now coupled with geopolitical tensions that look increasingly hard to resolve, which is giving funds the perfect...
Congress is moving forward with its FY 2027 spending bills, while also still working to address FY 2026 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is still in a shutdown. The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and passed its FY 2027 bill. The House bill prov...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Tunisian researchers have been able to fully sequence the genomes of two local durum wheat types that have been grown in Tunisia for generations. They say that this “could be the key to developing more climate-resistant duru...
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.