A survey of American attitudes toward biotech food by the global research company NPD Group sends a warning and a message of opportunity. Lame Duck Honesty Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana), soon to be ambassador to China, has proposed a refreshing rewrite of energy tax policy. He correctly notes that, "Our current set of energy tax incentives is overly complex and picks winners and losers with no clear policy rationale." In short, current policy that involves 42 different incentive programs is the result of special-interest lobbying rather a rational, technology-neutral approach.Ethanol interests immediately praised the change under the impression that incentives focused on clean energy will inherently favor them...
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.