Alternative Energy Roughhouse It was a smash-up week for alternative energy with more contradictory studies flying, legislative paring and mealy mouthed bed feathering.Ugly Studies: There was the renewed assertion by Princeton's Timothy Searchinger (this time on behalf of the Friends of the Earth) that biofuel mandates cause indirect land use changes (ILUC) and contribute toward global hunger. Biofuel proponents rightfully counter that world hunger has a more complex origin. However, critics like Matthias Finkbeiner of the Technical University of Berlin are as un-rooted on the ILUC as as Searchinger is on hunger. Without doubt, the current ILUC approaches are substandard but that is due to current overwhelming modeling complexity,...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.