The NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament starts this week; that is typically a major driver of demand for chicken wings – with the other drivers New Years and the NFL Super Bowl. According to the National Chicken Council, Americans ate 1.45 billion wings during the February Super Bowl; with two wings per bird, that is 725 million birds, or about 7.7 percent of the total 2022 broiler slaughter of 9.43 billion birds. Consider that is almost a whole month’s slaughter of birds to produce the wings that are, incredibly, consumed in one day. Anyway, the market is different going into the college basketball tournament this year. High demand in 2021, and COVID related bottlenecks, were bullish for wing prices. D...
What You Need to Know Today: Corn and soybean futures were lower to open the week, with funds still in control and in a selling mood. The upcoming WASDE report on Tuesday is also likely to feature larger corn and soybean stocks, which helped put grain futures on the defensive. Wheat futures we...
Key Takeaways: Currency exchange rates influence agricultural export competitiveness and producer profitability, even when underlying commodity prices remain unchanged. A weaker domestic currency allows agricultural exporters to receive more local currency for dollar-denominated sales, potenti...
Although inflation has remained elevated since the post-COVID surge, it steadily moderated until the past year. More to the point, today’s inflation looks very different from 2022, when the Consumer Price Index (CPI) peaked at 9 percent. During and after the pandemic, the M2 money supply...
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.