Chinese Farmers Complain About Large Soybean Imports Farmers in China's Heilongjiang province are complaining to the government that they are being hurt by the country's huge imports of biotech soybeans. Farmers claim the influx of soybeans is resulting in a contraction of the area planted to the crop in China and making the country more vulnerable to supply shortages. What they want is for the government to subsidize Chinese production of non-biotech soybeans and encourage consumers to pay more for those soybeans. They also claim it is the strategy of multinational grain companies to monopolize the Chinese soybean industry and drive Chinese soybean processing firms out of business.Most likely it is the Chinese soybean processing firms l...
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...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Pakistan’s smaller wheat farmers have been holding protests to complain about the lack of a support price for wheat and the potential expansion of GMO crop production. They also want the reinstatement of PASSCO, the governme...
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...
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.