President Joe Biden is “bad talking” about the food industry, accusing it of greed for raising prices. While his focus was on “chips” and shrinkflation, he could also have talked about his favorite food, ice cream. After all, his generation – those over age 75, are the second largest cohort for eating the frozen desert only barely being out-eaten by children. Shrinkflation in ice cream is called over-run, which simply means adding air to reduce the product’s density of expensive milk fat. For many people, ice cream is an essential non-essential. It is high demand comfort food, as proven by ice cream hogging nearly a full half-aisle in the average grocery store. As a “luxury” product in...
What You Need to Know Today: Grain futures fell hard overnight after the USDA’s Crop Conditions report showed better-than-expected ratings for corn and soybeans, despite difficult weather last week. The Conditions report was even more bearish in light of meaningfully beneficial rains acr...
Key Takeaways: New Mexico’s Clean Transportation Fuel Program expands demand for low-carbon fuels and creates another market for renewable feedstocks, adding incremental pressure to already limited supplies of lower-carbon inputs. Growing competition for waste-based feedstocks such as an...
As WPI reported on 17 July, the recently passed budget reconciliation bill in the House Budget Committee includes $12 billion in emergency farm assistance. This would be the seventh of the past nine years with ad hoc farm payments (FY2018, FY2019, FY2020, FY2022, FY2023, FY2024, and potentially...
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.