The Senate Agriculture Committee today had a hearing on cattle markets. Tomorrow, the House Agriculture Committee will convene a hearing on the same topic. There are slightly different emphases of the two hearings. The Senate hearing was on a couple of specific proposals: the Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act and the Meat and Poultry Special Investigator Act. Tomorrow’s House hearing will be more general, but on the same issues; its titled “An Examination of Price Discrepancies, Transparency, and Alleged Unfair Practices in Cattle Markets.” The Cattle Price Discovery and Transparency Act (CPDTA) is the third iteration of the old “50/14” bill that would have required beef packers to purchase 50 percen...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
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.