Congress Complicit in War The word to the wise is to watch what others do and not what they say, and that is especially true when it comes to politicians. Democrats and Republicans both say they lament the Trump trade war, but instead of stopping it, they are enabling it to continue. Without the trade mitigation payments being made to farmers, support for Mr. Trump would plummet in rural America. The payments are being made via $30 billion worth of discretionary authority in the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Act. Congress has the power to stop it by refusing to replenish the fund. Instead, the Congress last year included language in the spending bill that gave the CCC more flexibility to keep the money flowing. Notably, when the pres...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
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.