Worst Time The U.S. House Agriculture Committee has begun hearings in preparation for writing the 2023 version of the farm bill. This week’s hearings cover conservation and livestock; next week the Committee will hear from USDA Undersecretary Robert Bonnie on commodities and risk management. University of Tennessee Professor Daryll Ray is not usually right, but he has correctly observed that the writing of this farm bill will occur during a period of high prices and intensive political partisanship. Dr. Ray is a proponent of supply management and so he calls writing a farm bill during high prices the “worst time” since it often involves a policy that is ultimately inadequate for when prices eventually fall. Indeed,...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
Key Takeaways: The Middle East and North Africa's arid climate and limited water resources have created a structural dependence on imported wheat. Government wheat tenders in major importing countries serve as important benchmarks for global trade, providing insight into exporter competitivene...
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.