We hesitate to belabor the series of reports from USDA last week. Yet we cannot stay away from them because of the changes forced upon the prevailing conventional fundamental analyses for U.S. grains and the soy complex. In a nutshell, last week's reports from USDA tore up and threw out most prevailing supply and demand analyses, including some of USDA's own analyses. And effectively, they challenged the markets to acknowledge the new realities and do something about them.It was the U.S. corn outlook that suffered the biggest jolt when 1 December corn stocks were revealed to be about 200 million bushels lower than expected. This forced the surprising conclusion that the amount of corn used/consumed during the first quarter of the 2012/13...
Key Takeaways: Brazil confirmed a Newcastle disease outbreak at a commercial turkey farm in Santa Catarina on 18 October, raising concerns about potential disruptions to poultry exports despite the outbreak being confined to a single facility thus far. Mexico and Malaysia have imposed nationwi...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Pakistan’s smaller wheat farmers have been holding protests to complain about the lack of a support price for wheat and the potential expansion of GMO crop production. They also want the reinstatement of PASSCO, the governme...
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.