AI Analysis: Farm product price index (FPPI), monthly weights

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Farm Product Price Index (FPPI) dataset covers 14 commodity groups across 204 monthly periods from January 2009 to December 2025, revealing significant variation in farm-level price trends with a mean index value of 20.84 and a wide standard deviation of 27.08 on a 2007=100 base. The dataset is structurally complete with 2,856 records and shows a right-skewed distribution driven by aggregate categories, while most commodity groups exhibit strong positive correlations reflecting shared macroeconomic and agricultural market forces. Sub-categories such as Grains, Oilseeds, and Cattle & Calves demonstrate the highest price volatility, accounting for the majority of the 23 statistical outliers detected across the full period.

Key Findings

• The dataset contains 2,856 complete records — exactly 14 commodity groups × 204 months — with no missing values, spanning January 2009 to December 2025.
• Index values range from 0.20 to 100.00 with a mean of 20.84 and a median of 9.30, indicating a strongly right-skewed distribution driven by aggregate categories like 'Total crops' (~55.84) and 'Total index' (fixed at 100.00).
• Total crops and Total livestock and animal products average approximately 55.84 and 44.16 respectively, together always summing to 100 and representing the two primary divisions of the index.
• Among individual commodities, Cattle and Calves (mean ~16.15) and Grains/Oilseeds (mean ~17.96 each) carry the highest average weights, while Fresh fruit (mean ~1.69) and Eggs in shell (mean ~1.80) carry the lowest.
• 23 data points were flagged as statistical outliers (z-score > 2.5) across all commodity groups, with Grains, Oilseeds, and Cattle & Calves identified as the primary sources of price volatility.
• Most of the 14 commodity groups show strong positive correlations with one another over the 16-year period, suggesting broad shared drivers such as input costs, global demand, and weather events.
• The Total FPPI maintained a stable mean of exactly 100.0 with near-zero variance, confirming its role as the fixed base-year benchmark against which all sub-category price movements are measured.