We Were Wrong: A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that people were best at comparing the healthfulness of food products when the nutrition facts were presented for the entire container's worth of food. It is speculated that this would also address the problem of some manufacturers simply assigning more total servings to a package as a means of implying a more healthful product. Note that the FDA was presented with the option of a total package nutrient label when it was developing the current regulation 20 years ago. However, concerned that consumers would not understand the nutrient levels in context, the agency chose the current label which presents a serving as...
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.