Despite the plethora of new data sources such as crop tours, field surveys, satellite imagery and the numerous forecasts they support, there is still great uncertainty about the global crop supply. The influential combination of climate change and genetics presents enough doubts about the real final outcomes in some critical parts of the world. Flooding in the U.S. Corn Belt may reduce production this year by 9 percent. However, it could be more if the planting delays persist, or it could be less if output exceeds early forecasts (as has been the tendency in recent years). Corn and soybean output estimates in Brazil and Argentina have continued to be raised, much like those estimates in the Black Sea region last season. Last year’s...
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.