IMPLAN Blog

We’re excited to share that our annual core data release is now live — and this year’s release brings meaningful improvements that help analysts better reflect real local economies, especially in fast-changing or highly specialized regions.

This year, our Data Team used robust data and powerful harmonization tools to deliver a high quality core dataset in record time, navigating changes in federal data availability with precision and ensuring your analyses stay on the cutting edge.

Here’s a quick look at what’s new and why it matters:

New IMPLAN analysis reveals the economic ripple effects of reduced soybean farming due to tariffs, and what a recovery could mean moving forward.

According to the Wall Street Journal, China purchased just over 200 million bushels of U.S. soybeans from January through August of this year. That’s an 80% drop from the nearly 1 billion bushels purchased during the same period last year. For an industry where China previously accounted for more than half of the $24.5 billion in U.S. soybean exports, the change represents an estimated $9.8 billion reduction in output.

But the economic impact doesn’t stop on the farm.

The Farm Bill is a comprehensive piece of legislation that governs various agricultural and food programs, including SNAP, and has significant implications for the agricultural sector and the broader economy.

Contribution analysis is a modeling method used to estimate the value of a sector or group of sectors in a region at their current levels of production. Naturally, it is a valuable and useful tool for groups like industry associations and government entities that are evaluating the value of an industry to their community.