As Bob Kohlmeyer is fond of saying, farm bills are often written to cure the last problem agriculture faced. Moreover, farm bills for decades have been tied up in how to handle disasters. For example, there has been emergency disaster aid, which seemingly became routine for a number of years. Eligibility for disaster aid has been tied to farm programs and has been the cause for crop insurance reforms, and even has resulted in the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payment (SURE) program -- better known as "permanent disaster assistance." Tying those two factors together (looking forward to disaster indemnities and charting against what has happened in the past), Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) held a hear...
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.