Bleak Harvest Ahead The world grain market may be headed into a bear trend due to burgeoning supplies, but a review of the policy seeds that have been sown indicates troubled harvests ahead. Argentina's Legacy of Failed Policies Argentina was one of the world's wealthiest countries at the beginning of the 20th century. However, it found itself only ranked 50th in 2013, and its economy continues to decline as a result of bad economic and agricultural policies that are likely to continue in the future. Biofuels Policy Headed for Reform The situation surrounding the 2014 Required Volume Obligations (RVOs) for biofuel was the predictable result of the original Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 that created both the volume...
President Trump has opened the door to 100,000 MT of beef lean trimmings (limited to HTS codes 0201.30.5091, 0201.30.5097, 0202.30.5091, and 0202.30.5097) from countries listed under the “Other Countries” TRQ effective 1 September. These imports would not be subject to the over-quot...
Key Takeaways: CHS and OCP plan to invest up to $450 million in a Louisiana phosphate fertilizer facility capable of producing more than 1 MMT annually, marking the first new U.S. plant of its kind in more than 40 years. The facility could reduce U.S. dependence on imported finished phosphate...
A Small Industry Tied to a Global Benchmark The U.S. wool industry is small by global standards but heavily export-dependent, with roughly 60 percent of U.S. wool leaving the country each year. Australia, by contrast, dominates world wool trade. Because the U.S. lacks a deep domestic auction ma...
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.