World Perspectives

Mis-Analyze and Mis-Diagnose

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...

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Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.275/bushel, down $0.0125 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.3725/bushel, up $0.09 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soybeans closed at $11.24/bushel, up $0.015 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $303/short ton, up $2.2 from ye...

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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.

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