Danger of Corn Dispute Delay At the late March hearing before the Finance Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed USTR Katherine Tai not to delay taking formal action against Mexico for its proposed ban on GMO corn imports. She made no specific commitment and now the earliest date for filing a formal dispute settlement case under the USMCA has come and passed. The agency says it has no imminent plans to file a case. Academics at Ohio State University issued a report declaring confidence the U.S. would win the case should it proceed, but the formal process takes around eight and a half months to complete. This means that any final resolution would occur long after seed companies would need to be switching their production plans t...
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.