Rene Ebersole writes in The Nation about Monsanto and how the glyphosate controversy could be the company’s “Big Tobacco” moment. However, she focuses her purported smoking gun solely on the company’s relationship with top EPA officials and ignores the endorsement of the herbicide by literally hundreds of other scientific organizations around the world. Instead, she relies on the carcinogen declaration of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an organization that not only omits consideration of exposure but also ignored data that would have flipped its determination. If there has been a conspiracy, it appears more likely that it was committed by the IARC...
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.