Bumper Wheat Crop Expected, but Imports Still Cheaper Available records indicate the area under wheat in 2017/18 totals 28.3 million hectares, down about 4.77 percent from last year and less than the 30.2 million hectares planted under normal circumstances. While the area is smaller in Uttar Pradesh, there is still time for sowing. That window has closed in Madhya Pradesh, however, and the planted area there has reached 4.453 million hectares versus 5.381 million hectares a year ago and the usual 6.4 million hectares. Nevertheless, it could expand to 5-5.2 million hecatares if irrigation allows farmers to add some late sowing. The government of India (GOI) still has a production target of 97.5 MMT for 2017/18 against 98.38 MMT in 2016/17...
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.
The corn and soy complex closed higher, with the wheat market mixed, as winter wheat closed up but spring wheat and livestock ended lower. Part of the strength for corn and soybeans may have been a weather premium, as crop planting has started out fast but warm weather has been slow to develop...
Real GDP grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2026, slightly below the consensus expectation of 2.3 percent but above the 0.5 percent growth in Q4 2025. The GDP number matches the average annualized pace of growth since the peak back in late 2007, right before the Financial P...
Reflect for a moment on what you eat. There is a lot of advice out there in the ether about what you should eat, but really, what do you currently eat and how much? The good people at the USDA have some data for you, to help you answer that question. USDA says that we eat quite a bit of meat. L...