UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres attended the weekend’s G-7 summit in Hiroshima. At the meeting, he suggested the UN Security Council and the Bretton Woods global financial institutions need to be updated. He correctly noted that their design was based on the dominant countries right after World War II. Much has changed since then. Bangladesh has a population larger than Russia. China and India together will contribute over half the world’s economic growth in 2023. The G-7 was half the world’s GDP in 1980 but is just 30 percent of the total today. Mr. Guterres was not specific about how he envisions the institutions changing, but his focus was inequality and so presumably it would involve the loss of power by G...
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.