It's 1 March, Sequester Day, with no deal within reach. Yesterday two votes were taken on plans to avert the sequester. The Democratic plan failed 51-49 (see WPI 15 February for details) and the Republican plan failed 38-62 (see WPI 28 February for details). There is no third plan. In fact, according to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), "There will be no last-minute, back-room deal and absolutely no agreement to increase taxes."The sequester will go into effect today with varying implications. The cuts will be spread out over the rest of the fiscal year, which is the next seven months. The popular news item has been sequestration's effect on federal meat inspectors. There is a $1 million sequester of programmatic fund...
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.