By awakening consumers to the mundanity of the food business, one food critic and his ilk have spawned new Big Ag profits with meaningless but profitable products like non-GMO while growing niche segments like organic to the point that it is about to be relegated to commoditization.Food industry critic Michael Pollan has penned a piece in the New York Times that expresses his political disillusionment, but it also betrays the fault of his arrogance. It is a fitting revelation for anyone cocksure about their viewpoints on public policy to also consider that they may in fact be wrong.Pollan opens the piece by gloating how then-presidential candidate Barack Obama echoed his views about a “broken food system” on the 2008 campaign trail, the pre...
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.