In November 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers announced they’d come up with a proposed revision for the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), They published the proposal in December 2021, with a promise to finalize it by the end of 2022. That they did, and on 30 December a final version was issued. It is scheduled to go into effect in 60 days – around 1 March 2023. Defining WOTUS has been a long and winding path through many federal courts, and this new rule might be upended by yet another pending case. The Obama Administration had issued new WOTUS rules in 2015. At issue was the rule’s scope under the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction...
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.