Rough Night in Jericho is the name of an old western movie. As the title implies, things didn’t go as expected, and so it was with the wheat market this week.Rough Night in Jericho is the name of an old western movie. As the title implies, things didn’t go as expected, and so it was with the wheat market this week. A major winter storm dropped 10-20 inches of snow across a significant area of western Kansas, flattening crops that were already heading or headed. In addition to the crop-smashing snow, temperatures were very cold for many hours before it arrived. There were all kinds of comments and pictures discussing the Kansas wheat disaster. Estimates of crop loss ranged as high as 100-150 million bushels with one outlier suggesting it was...
What You Need to Know Today: China’s state-run COFCO, in statements on Tuesday, implied that U.S. corn exports were currently uneconomical but hinted that the Middle Kingdom would import 3.5 MMT of the feed grain this year, with 1 MMT likely sourced from the U.S. Another drone attack has...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Egypt’s Ministry of Supply reports that it will begin the sale of imported wheat through the Egyptian Mercantile Exchange. Sales are expected to be mainly to private-sector flour mills and are intended to stabilize wheat and...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
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.