Import dependence for food rankles most politicians since they have persistently fed a nationalistic feedback loop on the issue to their constituents. No one is demanding that their television sets be manufactured locally, but food is national security and others can’t be trusted. This is especially true in China where President Xi Jinping has been preaching that local leaders must stop the conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses for the sake of food security. Officials proclaim progress toward the goal, but some data tell a different story. Overall Chinese arable land has been declining at a little under 1 percent per year. Despite Brazilian President Lula De la Silva’s commitment to reducing the loss of Amazonia...
Key Market Insights July is here, and the grain markets already feel like they are shifting gears. With the June USDA reports now behind us, inflation is back in the conversation, and traders are once again turning their attention to three familiar summer drivers: demand, money flow, and weathe...
Key Takeaways: Poultry is the fastest-growing major animal protein, supported by lower production costs, affordability, and broad consumer appeal. Broilers are the most feed-efficient major livestock species, giving chicken a lasting cost advantage over beef and pork. Short production cycles a...
What You Need To Know Today: Ethanol margins continue to run well above year-ago and normal seasonal values, but have slipped in recent weeks on weaker DDGS and ethanol pricing. WPI’s models project a steady decrease in returns to ethanol production following the end of the summer...
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.