Most GoogledOn Saturday, 23 November, the most Googled thing for those in U.S. agriculture policy circles was Brooke Rollins. Her name had not been amongst the 15 or so possible names mentioned in media reports to head USDA. A prominent name added to the list late last week was former U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler. She had briefly served on the Senate Agriculture Committee and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, runs the Intercontinental Exchange. Instead, many in agriculture were scratching their heads over the weekend with Mr. Trump’s pick of Ms. Rollins. She grew up on a farm and studied agriculture at Texas A&M, but she has spent her career as a conservative policy advocate that rarely if ever involved agriculture. Of the half-d...
Key Market Insights Macros: Inflation isn’t cooling — it’s moving higher again. March PCE inflation (Personal Consumption Expenditures index — the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) rose 0.7 percent month-over-month, pushing the annual rate to 3.5 percent, the h...
An amendment to the U.S. House farm bill, aiming to remove the Save Our Bacon Act language in Section 12006 that would have stripped language to prohibit California’s Proposition 12, Massachusetts’ Question 3, and up to 500 state agricultural laws across the country, was blocked by...
WPI has officially launched Transportation Perspectives as a standalone weekly report separate from our Ag Perspectives articles and analysis. Current Ag Perspectives subscribers will have gratis access to the report through 16 April 2026. Please email us or subscr...
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.