World leaders express great concern that the level of world food insecurity is worsening under the weight of the Russian war on Ukraine. Then there are the multitude of different characterizations of the problem: food insecurity, hunger, undernourishment, etc. To the extent that it has worsened malnourishment is difficult to ascertain, though announcements of restricted exports could certainly heighten interpreted insecurity. Official collectors of such data, the FAO and World Bank have not published official data for 2020, let alone 2022. In 2019, they projected a rise in undernourishment for 2020, which was before COVID or the war in Ukraine. Global ending stocks of wheat, corn, and rice may have tightened of late, but they are still lar...
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.