USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist issues annually a long-term projection of its expectations for the major crops. Its latest forecast was released today. The advantage to such projections is that their accuracy is highly dubious and so the recriminations are few, at the same time the effort at accuracy should improve over time based on more data points and refinements to the algorithms. Looking at the forecast for ending stocks for corn, wheat, and soybeans in MY 2020/21, the estimate for corn is more volatile over time than those made for wheat and soybeans. Estimates for 2020/21 made back in 2013 were likely colored by the supply shortages just experienced in 2009, whereas estimates made in 2018 and 2019 were seen th...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.