Sometimes officials overlook their own agency’s data and then misdiagnose a problem. This week, FAO Director General Qu Dongyu announced that 2021 would be the “Year of Fruits and Vegetables” as a gesture to promote increased consumption of these products. He then claimed that high levels of waste in these products were the result of “perishable products and complex supply chains.” But the data suggest otherwise. Using the FAO’s own data, global fruit and vegetable production has been outpacing the increase in population by more than double (see graph below). Other data show that consumption has been increasing and not just production. Secondly, long or complex supply chains have become fodder for politi...
What You Need to Know Today: President Trump claimed the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was over, as both sides accused one another of violating the terms of the agreement. Commercial vessels are increasingly steering clear of the Strait of Hormuz as security risks escalate following Iran...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
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.