China Expanding Blockage of Imports from Canada It appears that China has raised the pressure on Canada to release the Huawei Technologies CFO. After she was arrested at the request of the U.S., the Chinese government began rejecting shipments of Canadian canola, ostensibly because of phytosanitary violations. This halted those exports to China at a great cost to the Canadian canola industry. Now exporters indicate China has begun tightened inspections of Canadian soybean shipments, which has effectively brought them to a stop as well. They were normally cleared by Chinese customs officials within a few days but now must wait more than three weeks and are sometimes rejected. One shipment of about 680 MT in containers was blocked, supposed...
Agriculture generates a lot of numbers in addition to crops and livestock. As ag economists, we are continually reviewing crop production, commodity prices, farm incomes, and international trade. You don’t often see much about capital investment in the ag press, however. New mills and gra...
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran resumed missile strikes after a brief pause in fighting, raising concerns that the five-month conflict could expand across the Middle East. Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles, Kuwait reported a fatal strike, and drone attacks damaged two natural...
The Senate Agriculture Committee will take up the farm bill next week, and a number of amendments targeting the meat industry are expected to be offered. Two of the most potentially damaging are the Schumer amendment, based on his bill, the Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act, and mandatory co...
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.