Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST COMMENTS It looks to be good news for grain importers as most experts in the ocean freight business are expecting dry-bulk freight rates to be steady to lower over the next year. The long expected rally in prices due to new low-sulfur requirement level doesn’t look to be happening. Vessel fuel cost will probably move higher when using low-sulfur fuel, but the experts say that an increase in available new vessels and a drop in demand from China will help to keep freight rates from moving higher. However, there will still be ups and downs in the grain freight rate that will be tied to the peaks in grain exports from Argentina, Brazil, USA and the Black Sea. Egypt’s Ministry of Supply r...
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...
Food Inflation The Open Markets Institute, which is notably funded by several “anonymous” donors and liberal foundations, obtained a guest editorial in the New York Times in which they blame agribusiness concentration for higher grocery prices. This is their schtick and it is politi...
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.