Spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is likely to cause a major showdown in the farm bill debate, just as it did 10 years ago. On Wednesday, 15 February, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its ten-year cost estimates for the mandatory spending programs in the farm bill. In general, federal budget law requires the CBO to provide annual baseline estimates of mandatory spending programs projected for 10 years; estimates are made under the presumption that there are no changes to the law during that period, or in other words, that the 2018 farm bill continues for the next 10 years without changes. The bottom line is that the current baseline is about $1.5 trillion, the first $1 trillion-plus farm b...
What You Need to Know Today: Markets got a surprise with a corn yield of 181.2 bushels/acre in the October WASDE, above the average estimate of 177.6 bushels/acre and up from USDA’s September estimate of 178.5 bushels/acre. Although stronger demand is expected to absorb some of the addit...
Key Takeaways: On Friday afternoon, President Trump announced that Russia will “immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel” to the United States. The deal, typical of this administration, is light on details but promises an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 m...
The USDA has lowered its 2026 red meat production forecasts slightly while forecasting a slight increase in broiler production. Beef is now projected at 24.802 billion pounds, 75 million pounds less than in September. Cow slaughter is expected to be up; however, this will be offset by lower ste...
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.