Another Leader Down The announcement that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzö Abe will resign to focus on a chronic health issue was a shock and could be disruptive. Abe ended Japan’s previous run of frequent turnover at the top and became the longest serving leader in history. His abilities were not limited to leading his own country since he had a better relationship than any other world leader with the volatile Mr. Trump. Changes at the top typically invoke difficult transition periods and there is plenty of change ahead. Germany, and Europe will lose the leadership skills of Angela Merkel next year. There will be volatility regardless of who wins the U.S. presidency this November. No one is indispensable, but some are better lead...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.