From late June-August of 1972, officials of Exportkhleb, the Soviet Union's government grain trading agency, traveled to New York and Washington, DC where they arranged secretive private meetings with representatives of each of the major U.S. grain exporting companies. Those individual meetings resulted collectively in sales of more than 19 MMT of U.S. wheat, feed grains and soybeans. USDA and other U.S. government agencies were aware, of course, that Exportkhleb officials were in the U.S. and meeting with U.S. grain exporters. It soon became alerted that some sales were made, but had no way of knowing any details. U.S. exporters considered such information to be confidential and proprietary as had always been the case. For that matter, e...
As predicted, the Federal Reserve held rates steady at the last meeting before the midterm elections, likely in part because of the election (see WPI 19 October and 22 September). The decision comes at the tail end of a midterm election cycle that has been marked by the two parties campaigning...
Key Takeaways: WPI’s new EU rapeseed crushing margin models point to weaker processing returns over the next four months due to higher rapeseed procurement costs and weaker product values. Statistical forecasts call for German crushing margins to decline from €181/MT to €...
Key Takeaways: The tariff burden rose sharply in 2025 and 2026: the effective rate on imports in HTS Chapters 1–24 increased from 1.53 percent in 2024 to 6.11 percent in 2025, before averaging 5.68 percent in January–August 2026. Headline rates tell only part of the story: exemptio...
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.