While wheat production has declined in the U.S. over the last two-three decades, it has expanded elsewhere in the world. That U.S. wheat should still be the world wheat trade leader may seem surprising in some respects.The process of creating a new farm bill grinds along toward its apparent conclusion in Congress with the stickiest issues being the dairy program and the amount of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). For many of us, today's SNAP will forever be the food stamp program with only a peripheral connection to traditional farm policy issues at best. The current farm bill debate and its legislative process are reminders to some of us old farm bill veterans of how greatly things have changed. It used to b...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.