The French Rivera meets the Midwest: Monte Carlo simulations of U.S. corn and soybean yields.The world’s most famous casino, the Monte Carlo along the French Rivera, may seem far removed and irrelevant to American corn and soybean yields. However, its name is forever tied to a statistical method for estimating the probability of an event’s occurrence. Engineers developed and used Monte Carlo methods during WWII for the Manhattan Project, but the technique now enjoy a wide range of applications, including the forecasting of corn and soybean yields.To conduct Monte Carlo analysis, one needs a probability distribution with a mean and standard deviation. From there, random “draws” (simulations) are generated and typically used to calculate the...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Key Takeaways: U.S. soybean crushing began in 1911 and saw its most rapid expansion during the 1930s amid the broader agricultural and technology revolutions of the time. After peaking in the early 2000s, the soybean crushing industry went through a downturn as poor crush margins forced...
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.