In November 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers announced they’d come up with a proposed revision for the definition of “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), They published the proposal in December 2021, with a promise to finalize it by the end of 2022. That they did, and on 30 December a final version was issued. It is scheduled to go into effect in 60 days – around 1 March 2023. Defining WOTUS has been a long and winding path through many federal courts, and this new rule might be upended by yet another pending case. The Obama Administration had issued new WOTUS rules in 2015. At issue was the rule’s scope under the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
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.