Grain markets traded without conviction today, see-sawing around unchanged and with modest volume. Aggies had WASDE day and outside markets had Fed day, and both events this week were kind of a bust. Some might consider it a positive to lack drama interrupting the holiday period, and that is the current outlook barring something unexpected. Speaking of the holidays, it is party time in DC and Christmas cheer helps but the sentiment remains unsettled. With much of Washington as its target, the Trump Administration has boosted the usual amount of uncertainty. A reoccurring theme amongst aggies is the wish that citizens and politicians better understood agricultural economics. The policy attacks on nutrition, ingredients, meat packers, t...
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.
WPI Grain Prices and Freight Rate App Note: you can also visit the app directly by clicking here. Supplemental Information The section below offers a concise view of the options available in the current version of the WPI FOB Price and Freight Rate app, along with a short “...
What You Need to Know Today: Iran says its definition of the Strait of Hormuz is now a “vast operation area” that stretches from Jask to Siri Island. The White House said President Trump did not sign a suspension of the TRQs on beef imports but is “finalizing potential...
If the media headlines and Trump critics are to be believed, President Trump is headed to Beijing this Thursday in a weakened position. China is in control, it has the upper hand, and expectations are very low. These are the same critics that argue against overly simplistic zero-sum analyses in...