Inequivalent, Protectionist In 2012, the U.S. and EU established an agreement asserting that each other’s organic standards were substantially equivalent. The agreement was reviewed again in 2015 and may require additional review depending on one’s interpretation of “substantial” and equivalent. The EU’s first organic directive occurred in 1991 and was directed at unprocessed commodities. In 1999, animal agriculture was added, and a new directive was introduced in 1999. Now a new directive goes into effect in January 2022 and it has some changes that could undermine the equivalency agreement. The new EU rule claims that producers in third countries must comply with the “same standards” as European...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
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.