On Friday as part of the daily White House COVID19 briefing, Secretary Perdue announced the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP). It will come in two parts; the first will be direct payments to producers totaling $19 billion. The second will be a $3 billion commodity purchase program. USDA will be holding a series of stakeholder conference call briefings today for each sector, and tomorrow will hold a teleconference on the purchase program. Direct Payments: $16 billion in direct payments for farmers and ranchers, which will come from the $9.5 billion emergency program included in the CARES Act and $6.5 billion in remaining Credit Commodity Corporation (CCC) funding. This will fully deplete the CCC until July when $14 bil...
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.