Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST COMMENTS Importers in the region of Argentina grains, oilseeds and derivatives should expect higher prices in coming days as the new Argentina government has increased export taxes. The tax has been changed from a flat rate per U.S. dollar value to a percentage of 12 percent for corn, wheat, sorghum, sunseeds and barley and 30 percent for soybeans, soymeal and soyoil. The registration of new export sales has been stopped --- prior to this expected export tax increase there had been an overwhelming rush to register export sales, as, once registered, the new tax would not apply to “old” sales. However, in a late development, the government has said that they will discuss the new export...
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.