The concept of holding stocks of grain that can be used during times of need has a nice humanitarian ring to it. It only becomes a good deal less appealing when one begins to sort out the realities of what this actually involves.In yesterday’s (11 May) Ag Perspectives, Gary Blumenthal remarked about the WTO ministerial decision to craft a rule that would allow national governments to accumulate and hold stocks of grain for purposes of food security. He noted that some countries that export agricultural commodities were open to consideration of such a rule as long as the accumulated grain stocks did not contribute to exports. Those comments started us thinking about stockholding and food security, an old concept that re-emerges in different...
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...
Key Market Insights Macro markets delivered a full whipsaw today. Early in the session, crude oil had rallied back above $100/barrel as traders priced renewed concern over the U.S.-Iran standoff and potential supply risk through the Strait of Hormuz. That strength helped pull grains off their o...
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.