Analyses about the Russian war on Ukraine have tended to focus on the displacement of agricultural commodity sales and input shortfalls. However, the Biden Administration’s belated concession to ban imports of oil from Russia was based on the more substantial economic and political risks involved. At the narrow political level, relative voter happiness is correlated to the price of gasoline. The U.S. is headed into the summer driving season when gasoline demand will increase another 10-15 percent. The value of petroleum was already up 50 percent before the war, which is what emboldened Putin to act on Ukraine even if spring weather presented field problems for his mechanized divisions. Cutting off Russian oil supplies now at th...
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.