Congress is in recess this week ahead of the Easter and Passover holidays, with much yet to do, including ending a partial shutdown and considering the “skinny” farm bill. Congress is scheduled to return on 13 April, though that may change, especially if the Homeland Security fundin...
SPS Barriers India’s rice exports to China have been accelerating, but Beijing recently rejected three shipments of non-Basmati rice, citing genetically modified content. The technical rejection is notable because China’s Certification and Inspection Group had already pre-cleared th...
Forlorn or Failure The spin from the WTO on the organization’s recent MC14 meetings was that a lot of decisions were adopted, progress was made, and while the event “ran out of time,” new commitments on outstanding issues can still be made in Geneva. Director-General Ngozi Oko...
The 2026 USDA Prospective Plantings Report is scheduled for release tomorrow. The report surveys farmer planting intentions for major crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. It also asks about 2025 planted and prevent-plant acres. This report gives the first real snapshot of what planted ac...
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.