Brazil Helps Brussels EU foreign policy has designated Latin America as the region of the world deserving closer relations. Most of the countries in the region were settled by Europeans and there is a perceived sharing in values. However, an EU free trade agreement with Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) has been stymied by European farm groups opposing any new competition from highly competitive South Americans. The EU’s deforestation policy was motivated by efforts to overcome resistance from environmental groups and now Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is lending a helping hand. He announced a new four-year roadmap toward net-zero deforestation. The plan will allow land substitution and...
Yesterday we wrote about the Q1 GDP numbers and the June employment reports in an article entitled Real GDP for Q1 Relying on AI Buildout, Held Back by Consumer Spending. That article mentioned that consumer spending had become a drag on GDP. Nonetheless, real GDP in Q1 was revised upward to 2...
The final reading for real GDP growth in Q1 was revised upward to a 2.1 percent rate from a prior estimate of 1.6 percent, but the underlying details show a weaker mix. The stronger headline reflected a large upward revision to net exports, along with smaller upward adjustments to inventories a...
On 4 July 2026, the United States will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In observance of the Fourth of July holiday, Ag Perspectives will not be published on Friday, 3 July. We will resume our normal publication schedule on Monday, 6 July...
As Cuba's economic crisis has deepened, discussions about the country's eventual economic and political transition have reemerged. One question that inevitably follows is what opportunities might emerge for U.S. agricultural exports. So, here’s a brief review of those opportunities, but n...
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.