Pork Problems Bloomberg reports that surplus stocks of pork meat are piling up in Europe and especially in Germany as an outbreak of African Swine Fever has locked suppliers out of important export markets. Pig prices are reportedly down 40 percent since March and carcass values are the lowest since 2016. Moreover, it could be another year before disease management will enable exports to resume. However, the larger threat to the industry may be the rise of the Green Party in Germany. The Greens have the opportunity to win control of the government in elections in 2021 and in the past has been a proponent of policies such as the meat-free veggie days at the country’s canteens. Separately, organized labor and other groups are protesti...
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.