The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate four times in 2023 for a cumulative rate hike of 100 basis points, though it left rates unchanged in September and November. Higher borrowing and carrying costs have been the new normal in agriculture, a shift that will linger to some degree for the next several years. Indeed, the forecast from the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri forecasts interest expenses in 2024 to be $12.8 billion more than what the cost of capital to producers was in 2021. It's easy to forget that the federal funds rate was at a 0 to 0.25 percent at the end of 2021, before the Fed started to raise rates in Q1 2022. According to the USDA’s Economic R...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.