Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Egypt’s supply ministry has announced that the government’s wheat storage capacity will be expanded to 3.9 MMT by 2022. While first announced last fall, this now seems to be “officially” approved. Some of it seems to be part of the second phase of the Blumberg Grain storage development project in that country. Egypt has cleared its former supply minister of corruption in the local wheat buying scandal of 2016, which involved the payment for up to 2 MMT of wheat that did not exist. All criminal charges against him have been dropped. Egypt’s statistics agency CAPMAS has reported that the country’s self-sufficiency rate for wheat has dropped from 50 per...
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.