By now, there can't be anyone involved in agriculture who is not aware that the crop production situation in the U.S. has undergone a quick and extreme turn for the worse. The national media also has become an active proponent of the drought-related boom in commodity prices across the Corn Belt, with the financial networks reporting on it at least once every hour. Certainly, Wednesday's shockingly low corn and soybean yield estimates caught many by surprise. The talk since that report mostly has been about how yields are very likely to be even smaller than the 146 BPA corn and 40.5 BPA soybean yields in the WASDE. We want to remind our clients that these yield estimates are not based on actual crop surveys, test plots, etc. That will come...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.