MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST COMMENTS The World Bank expects the Egyptian economy will grow by 5.8 percent this fiscal year which began 1 July 2019. Growth is expected to be much the same for 2020/21. Experts are very happy with the progress that Egypt has made with falling inflation, balanced budgets, a stronger currency and lower debt. However, while the experts may all be happy, the same cannot be said for most Egyptians who have not seen any benefit from the improved economy – most were hit very hard by the reduction or elimination of government subsidies. Turkish forces are reported to have taken over the Syrian grain silos in Ras al-Ayn in northern Syria. They have also “liberated” farmland and 16 village...
What You Need to Know Today: Agricultural commodities were mostly lower on the day, with red-hot soyoil a notable exception. Export sales were a bit underwhelming, particularly for corn with export sales down 52 percent week-over-week. The weakness in ag markets tracked crude oil weakness wit...
With the war in Iran affecting fuel and fertilizer prices, higher tariffs, weak commodity prices, ag labor constraints, and other factors, farm bankruptcies are now at a 6-year high, a signal of growing stress. During the month of April, 62 Chapter 12 bankruptcies were filed, which is a 1...
WPI recently completed an expansion of our methodology for estimating and forecasting U.S. and global soybean crushing margins. The new approach incorporates the energy market’s expanding influence on the oilseed sector and the structural changes in global biofuel demand. This report is i...
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.