Regional News Germany’s winter wheat area is estimated at 2.8 Mha for 2023/24, down 1.9 percent. Winter barley was seeded across 1.3 Mha this year, a 5.1 percent increase. Ukrainian officials are citing concern for the hardiness of winter crops (most notably wheat) as an unusually warm winter has delayed or prevented the “hardening” of these crops, making them more vulnerable to frost/freeze risk. The warm weather has also increased disease risk and prevalence in some 2-4 percent of winter grains. Ukrainian farmers are looking to expand spring crop planted area in 2023. Total planted area, however, will be down 20 percent from 2021 due to war’s impacts, especially in eastern Ukraine. Milling Wheat&nbs...
Key Market Insights Macros: Inflation isn’t cooling — it’s moving higher again. March PCE inflation (Personal Consumption Expenditures index — the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) rose 0.7 percent month-over-month, pushing the annual rate to 3.5 percent, the h...
An amendment to the U.S. House farm bill, aiming to remove the Save Our Bacon Act language in Section 12006 that would have stripped language to prohibit California’s Proposition 12, Massachusetts’ Question 3, and up to 500 state agricultural laws across the country, was blocked by...
WPI has officially launched Transportation Perspectives as a standalone weekly report separate from our Ag Perspectives articles and analysis. Current Ag Perspectives subscribers will have gratis access to the report through 16 April 2026. Please email us or subscr...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.