Pakistan is finally joining Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nigeria as a wheat importer. The basis has long existed but has taken time to fully develop. Like the other nations in this cohort, there is a large, growing, and youthful population running headlong into a limited agricultural base. Consumption finally outpaced domestic supply in 2018/19. Pakistan is mostly a desert country with its agriculture and people concentrated in the Indus River plain. It has nearly eight times the irrigated land as neighboring Afghanistan, but it is environmentally fragile. There are floods and earthquakes, plus political and geopolitical instability. Most importantly, there is food insecurity. The government is trying to improve domestic production with bord...
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...
What Matters Today... Fed holds rates steady as inflation uncertainty tied to the Iran conflict pressures equities and supports broader commodity risk premia Biofuel demand accelerating globally, with U.S. imports of used cooking oil and strong soyoil demand reinforcing upside across the soy c...
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.