Proponents for improved human nutrition and a better environment advocate that humans eat more plant proteins and less animal meats. An entire industry is being built to make analog meats from plant protein sources. Yet Mother Nature has already packaged together plant sources with high levels of protein, plus healthy fats like monounsaturated ad polyunsaturated fats. Moreover, production and consumption of these natural plant protein sources have been growing rapidly. The sale of almonds and pistachios has been growing at better than 4.5 percent per year. Walnuts, of which China is the world’s largest producer, have been expanding at a 4 percent annual rate. While peanuts (aka groundnuts) are a grain legume and an oilseed, it...
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...
Let’s return briefly to the fake meat hype cycle, now sitting somewhere in a dusty corner of your mind, not entirely forgotten. What happened to all those products, known as plant-based alternative proteins? They were supposed to be as good as real meat—cheaper, more environmentally...
New Trade Agreements U.S. and Indian officials say that bilateral trade negotiations are progressing on a comprehensive deal to expand earlier completed chapters on market access, NTBs and purchases. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become more free trade oriented since consolidating his power...
Free Trade to State Direction Conceptually, American farmers are huge winners under a free trade policy promising fair and equitable terms. As critics of President Trump’s trade wars will be quick to point out, “U.S. farmers have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of U.S...
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.