The staff at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) continues to watch their long ball knocked foul. Budget Outtakes Some observations on other parts of the Obama administration's proposed budget for FY 2015:No Green Friend: President Obama is pushing his environmental agenda and brought John Podesta back into the White House to ensure its success. Yet, the president's budget proposes cutting EPA's budget by $300 million. This would be the fifth straight year in which the environment agency's funding was decreased. Most prior cuts were made to enforcement, but the president this time proposes reducing support for clean water. EPA does get to administer a newly proposed Climate Resilience Fund, which is a resignation that we are p...
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...
Unlike the 2022 fertilizer shock, today’s disruption is rooted less in rerouted trade flows and more in damaged production capacity, raw material constraints and uncertain recovery timelines. That makes this a longer-duration risk for U.S. agricultural producers and retailers who must sec...
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.