Cultural The Year of the Pig is Here This week was the kickoff of China’s largest and longest national holiday of the year, the Spring Festival (also known as Chinese New Year). The tradition dates back more than 4,000 years and coincides with the start of the Lunar Calendar. Monday was New Year’s Eve with celebrations featuring images of pigs, the zodiac animal for 2019, taking place across the country. The Spring Festival will run until 15 February and then be succeeded by the Lantern Festival. As such, soybean and corn processing activities should slow to a crawl for at least the next ten days. The pig follows the dog as the twelfth and last zodiac animal in China’s Lunar Calendar system. The use of the zodiac starte...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.