With the retirement from Congress of House Energy and Commerce (HEC) Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA), the gavel was up for grabs in what is arguably the most powerful committee in the House. The third and fourth ranking Republicans, Representatives Bob Latta of Ohio and Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, squared off to lead the panel, with Gutherie winning the backing of the House Republican Steering Committee yesterday. The next step to Guthrie’s ascension is for the full conference to ratify the Steering Committee’s choice, which typically is a formality.The HEC Committee is the oldest standing legislative committee in the House of Representatives and its broad jurisdiction – which includes health care (Guthrie is the chair of the he...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes, with the U.S. hitting Iranian bridges, energy sites, and military infrastructure. Iran launched a missile into Kuwait that damaged a desalination plant. Crude oil futures surged on heightened Middle East tensions, providing supp...
Congress returned this week from its Fourth of July recess, with another break scheduled for the month of August, to face a busy agenda before adjourning for the August recess. Congress has several priorities, including the National Defense Authorization Act, a potential third reconciliation pa...
There was a time, not so long ago, when you could easily explain U.S. agricultural policy. It was countercyclical and focused on risk management, especially for traditional row crops. There were a few exceptions, like dairy and sugar, which maintained the remnants of supply control. Participati...