What's in the Beef Over the years, the popular restaurant chain Chipotle has aired commercials denigrating factory farms while promoting an image of its farm sources as bucolic in the fictitious manner envisioned by most consumers. They have also, until now, claimed to only sell natural beef never treated with antibiotics. However, money talks. Now that cattle are at a 21-year low, the firm announced that it would accept beef treated with antibiotics for disease but not as a growth promotant. Good luck delineating the difference. TTIP Status The first meeting of negotiators on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) last month was organizational. U.S. aggies are insisting on regulatory convergence using the American scienc...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Unlike the 2022 fertilizer shock, today’s disruption is rooted less in rerouted trade flows and more in damaged production capacity, raw material constraints and uncertain recovery timelines. That makes this a longer-duration risk for U.S. agricultural producers and retailers who must sec...
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.