I am in Japan this week meeting with a wide array of individuals involved in Japan's trading, animal feed and animal production sectors. The meetings have been with most of the major trading companies and oilseed processors as well as with firms that produce animal feed, swine, broilers and eggs. The objective has been to gain a better understanding of the structure of the industry and to hopefully learn what changes the Japanese industries are likely to see in the future. It certainly has been an eye-opening experience.Japan's feed and animal production sectors are in many ways 25 years behind the rest of the developed world in terms of how they operate. There is very little vertical integration here. The companies that import feed ingre...
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.