Iran is a major importer of grains and vegetable oil, but its estrangement is getting worse. Now the EU has joined the U.S. in imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic. The watershed was the death last month of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of Tehran’s morality police known as the Guidance Patrol. She had been arrested for not wearing the hijab head covering mandatory for all women. Relatively large protests followed her murder and indicated the potential for future political changes based on important demographic changes in the country. China had its one child policy, but it is Iran that experienced the fastest drop off in population growth. Moreover, women are the now concurrently the most educate...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...