Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA Syria is facing a water crisis in the northeast that it blames on Turkey. Dams on the Euphrates River in Turkey have reduced the river's flow while Turkish control on Syrian water stations is said to have limited water supplies for agriculture. Syria has suffered from very low rainfall in the past two years and farmers are dependent on the Euphrates and local aquifers for water supplies. Turkey’s invasion of northeastern Syria in late 2019 is said to have led to much of the water supply problems. Water is being trucked into the area for sale to the public with little or none available for agriculture. Syria had planned to refurbish a water purification facility that had n...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...
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.