Yesterday Bob Kohlmeyer shared his typically keen and instructive insight on the upcoming farm bill (see Ag Perspectives, 16 November). His fluency in all things commodity related, from markets to policy, comes from years of intimate involvement. As our former colleague Gregg Doud once commented in discussing Dan Morgan’s bestselling book Merchants of Grain, “You and I read about it; Bob lived it.” Bob’s oft-warned general observation about the farm bill process is that “farm bills often tend to be written about the past with little attention paid to the future.” The proof is certainly the 2014 Farm Bill that dropped the Direct Payment program as farmers argued it would not be possible to justify a decoup...
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.