SOTU to Faltering: Earlier this week, it was speculated that President Obama might mention the launch of a trans-Atlantic trade agreement in his upcoming State of the Union address. Indonesia's candidate to lead the World Trade Organization, Mari Pangestu, publicly speculated that a U.S.-EU trade pact would serve as a catalyst for moving the long-stalled Doha negotiations to a conclusion. Today, there is no agreement whether, let alone when, such a trade negotiation would be initiated. The U.S. is demanding commitment to a comprehensive and significant set of objectives. Otherwise, countries participating in the already launched Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations might interpret that Washington is willing to settle for a watered...
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...
What You Need to Know Today: Harvest pressure in the U.S. sent corn and soybeans lower as supplies increased and there were signs USDA’s upward revisions to yields in the October WASDE could be close to right. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated over the weekend, with Ukrai...
Developer's Note 24 August 2026: WPI recently completed an exercise that updated the codebase for this app and solved some of the discrepancies between our five-year average calculation and USDA's. There are a few lingering cases where early (late) starts (finishes) to the crop cycle resu...
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.