World Perspectives

Plant-Based Deficit

Proponents of plant-based alternatives to meat envision healthier, more planet friendly fare but too often the deficit is in long-lasting satiety. This is because plants often have micronutrients and fiber but lack the caloric content favored by the human body. The mushroom-based Gardenburger and its cousin Quorn derived from microfungus have long been used as a meat substitute by vegetarians. Globally, the production of mushrooms has literally mushroomed, but largely only in China.  China produces over 75 percent of the world’s mushrooms, with Japan, the U.S., and EU providing the bulk of the remainder of world output. But while production in Japan and the U.S. has been flat and declining in the EU over the past decade, China&r...

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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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