Inefficiency Beneficial: The organic food industry issued an Orwellian report yesterday proudly claiming that "[p]roducing U.S. foods organically creates thousands more jobs than if that food were produced using conventional agricultural methods." Apparently they skipped that Milton Friedman economics course. During a trip to a poor developing country in the 1960s, Friedman observed the construction of a canal and asked why it was being dug by men with shovels instead of excavating machines. The government official told him it was a jobs program. Friedman sarcastically replied, "Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels." In other words, employment does no...
What You Need to Know Today: Declining crop conditions ratings and shaky results from the Pro Farmer crop tour sent grains sharply higher on Tuesday. The Pro Farmer tour in Ohio pegged the state yield at 180.18 BPA, about 5.5 BPA below the tour’s 2025 estimate. Similarly, the Pro Farmer...
Based on a Depression-era statute, President Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of exports to the U.S., or about 5.2 percent of the $383 billion worth of goods the U.S. imported from Canada in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Of that total, about $39.3 billion was agricu...
Key Takeaways: Brazil’s growing role in global agriculture is accompanied by a major vulnerability: the country imports approximately 88 percent of its fertilizer needs. High natural gas costs and development challenges have limited domestic nitrogen and potash production despite Brazil&...
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.