During the State of the Union (SOTU) address, President Trump made several claims about food prices, citing reductions in costs to consumers. Food inflation is a major issue for voters, and the President is hyper-focused on beef prices in particular prior to the 2026 mid-term elections. The final CPI numbers are in for 2025, and food prices were up 0.7 percent for the month, the largest monthly increase since October 2022. His claims on beef prices were accurate but need to be put in context. Since 2023, wholesale proteins have been on a rollercoaster. For the year, beef was up 13.1 percent, up from 5.8 percent in 2024. That compares to pork at 5.7 percent, down from 11.8 percent, and poultry is 3.1 percent, up from 0 percent in 2024. Beef...
What You Need to Know Today: Headlines emerging from negotiations between President Trump and President Xi were relatively limited, with a more substantive announcement expected Monday. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer indicated that additional details related to agricultural trade cou...
The heat of summer is now transitioning into more moderate temperatures, and the next two months have the busiest marketing periods of the year for replacement cattle. Weather always influences the replacement cattle market, and the primary grain belt in the Southern Plains, where many cattle a...
Key Takeaways: Diesel accounts for about 64 percent of U.S. farm fuel spending. For farmers, the pressing question is what a higher price adds to each field operation. Iowa farm diesel averaged $5.50/gallon in September, compared with the $2.89/gallon Iowa State assumed for its February machin...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.