As impressive as the new barge and export facilities are, there continue to be major bottlenecks in the inland transportation system that hinder commodity movements.Participating in a tour last week, which was organized by the U.S. soybean sector to investigate Brazil's agricultural transportation and export infrastructure, provided the opportunity to visit with farmer organizations and government officials in Cuiaba, Mato Grosso as well as with port and exporter officials in the ports of Belem, Santarem, Itaqui and Bacarena. The group also toured export facilities in the latter three. Santarem, Belem and Bacarena are located along the Amazon in the state of Para, and Itaqui is in the state of Maranhao.The tour participants came away impres...
Grains posted strong gains today, putting the bulls firmly in the driver’s seat. There was no shortage of fuel for the move, with three W’s driving the rally: weather, war and worry. Weather: Cooler temperatures are temporarily easing stress across the Northern Plains and Midwest, b...
Key Takeaways: Global and U.S. cotton demand has struggled since the post-COVID-19 pandemic surge, which has left cotton prices drifting lower in the U.S. The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, along with their impact on global energy markets, could boost cotton demand...
Key Takeaways: Persistent labor shortages are increasing operational challenges and costs across U.S. agriculture, particularly in labor-intensive sectors such as specialty crops, dairy, and meat processing. Immigrant workers, including H-2A employees, remain essential to the agricultural work...
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.