EU trade negotiators will reportedly offer their U.S. counterparts tariff elimination on 96 percent of goods, and while tariffs will remain on sensitive products like pork and beef, larger tariff rate quotas will be offered. Aid to the Irrelevant USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack famously ascribed problems passing a farm bill as follows, "It's the fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country." Yet today the President of the United States signed into law a farm bill written by Congress that is exactly what rural America lobbied for, plus he announced a new "Made in Rural America" export and investment initiative. Admittedly, the new initiative is an odd set of platitudes. A...
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.