Heading into the USDA’s annual Ag Outlook Forum (AOF) next week, there is heightened speculation and anticipation about what the 2026/27 crop outlook will be. WPI updated our acreage forecasting models to help clients know what to expect—most likely—from the upcoming AOF forecasts. Note that the models we use this time of year attempt to predict what the acreage figures will be in the March Prospective Plantings report, not final acreage. The distinction is important, as the March Prospective Plantings figures have historically reflected more of the economic factors influencing farmers, whereas the final acreage numbers are influenced by economics and, more so than the earlier reports, spring weather. Critical to our...
What You Need to Know Today: Crude oil prices dropped sharply with traffic flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. There were reports that Iran was behind an attack on a cargo ship near the coast of Oman, which would be a violation of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Pr...
On Wednesday, the White House submitted a national security supplemental spending request for $87.6 billion. The majority of the request includes funding for the conflict in the Middle East, but there are agricultural provisions as well. The supplemental funding package includes more than $11 b...
Can we really expect a bushel of corn to carry an environmental passport throughout the entire food system? One that reliably documents its carbon footprint, biodiversity impacts, water use, soil carbon, and other environmental attributes all the way from the farm field to the consumer? This is...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.