Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA Syria’s government has decided to block the import of many products in order to conserve foreign currency reserves for the purchase of imported wheat. The import suspension list covers 20 items and is to be in place for six months. Syria has been hit very hard by the recent increase in international wheat prices and the drop in the value of the Syrian pound. Saudi Arabia’s wheat imports have switched to Russian wheat now that the Saudi milling operations have been privatized. Due to shorter, quicker shipping times and adjustments to import specifications – mainly an increase in allowed bug damage – Russian wheat has replaced German as the main import. W...
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.