Europe’s Bad Boy Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not well liked in Brussels, nor in Kyiv. Not only does he rankle Western Europe’s democratic virtues, but he also appears to side with Vladimir Putin. Yesterday he said that Ukraine has no chance of winning the war against Russia. Hungary is also the only EU country that has retained its unilateral restrictions against agricultural imports from Ukraine. Orban is not alone though. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to have stood up Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a meeting planned for last weekend’s G-7 meeting. The leftist government of Brazil has sided with Moscow. Africa’s Bad Country Washington has completed some key c...
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.