U.S. fruit and vegetable growers made their annual trek to Capitol Hill but instead of their usual gift of a full box of fresh produce for the Members of Congress, they only filled it a quarter full. Their message: fresh fruit production has fallen by 10 percent and fresh vegetable output has gone down by 23 percent due to the lack of available laborers. At the same time, imports of fruit and vegetable products have increased by nearly 38 percent over the past five years. The solution is revising immigration law to make temporary migrant labor easier to procure. Congress has failed to act. Mexico is the largest beneficiary of this dynamic. Some could argue that there is also a misalignment of farmland resources, where overproduction...
What You Need to Know Today: Day three of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour found corn yield potential below last year in both Illinois and western Iowa. Illinois corn yields averaged 184.2 bushels/acre, down from 199.6 bushels/acre last year and the 199.2 bushels/acre three-year average, while wester...
The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) projects China’s chicken imports to drop by 33 percent this year and another 15 percent next year, as domestic production outpaces growing consumption and the country’s own exports surge. In its annual report on the Chinese poultry...
Key Takeaways: $13 billion in new U.S. dairy processing investment is moving across the sector, led by cheese ($3.2 billion), milk and cream ($2.9 billion), and yogurt and cultured dairy ($2.8 billion), with butter-powder capacity ($1.6 billion) and ice cream ($530 million) rounding out the bu...
From WPI Consulting
Infrastructure investment due diligence
On behalf of a Canadian oilseed processer WPI's team provided market analysis, econometric modeling and financial due diligence in support of a $24 million-dollar investment in a Ukrainian crush plant. Consistent with WPI's findings, local production to supply the plant and the facility's output have expanded exponentially since the investment. WPI has conducted parallel work on behalf of U.S., South American and European clients, both private and public, in the agri-food space.