The U.S. wheat industry wrote a letter this week to Canadian officials that turned that government's successful arguments against America's country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirement into reasons Ottawa needs to change its wheat import requirements. Silly TPA Amendments The U.S. Senate is going late into Friday night trying to find a way to complete the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill. One hurdle is over 200 amendments ranging from the hypocritical (other countries have to give equal pay to women) to the moral (mandating other countries give equal rights to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people). The concepts open up all kinds of possibilities for the transatlantic negotiations such as Europe mandating that the U.S. fol...
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.