The Energy Information Administration’s energy outlook for this fall and winter factors in agriculture demand. Propane is expected to be down, diesel is expected to be up. Corn crop maturity in the U.S. is on track with the previous five-year average, and harvested grain moisture content is lower than last year, reducing propane use for drying. In fact, there has not been a big need for drying for most of the past five years, except for last year. A wet crop and a late harvest boosted the drying use demand for propane, competing with livestock/poultry and residential sectors, causing problems for corn growers. Energy costs in corn production last year, driven by propane, were about 19 percent higher than the previous fiv...
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.