Staying in Lanes Under ideal governance, elected legislatures create the principles of public policy. For example, pesticides should be used when proven scientifically safe and banned when proven harmful. Regulators then implement those principles using expertise uniquely held by impartial experts. Politicians come under career ending pressure from activists and voters in a manner not experienced by career scientists. Politics led to a ban on the sweeteners cyclamate and saccharin many decades ago based on junk science and politics, and were subsequently shown to not cause cancer. Now Congressman Bennie Thompson (R-Mississippi) says Republicans will work to allow pesticides banned by the U.S. Environmental protection Agency. Not because Co...
What You Need to Know Today: Wheat prices surged after Ukrainian strikes on Russian vessels and infrastructure disrupted grain shipments, halting traffic through the Sea of Azov, Kerch Strait, and Black Sea. The July WASDE report offered a modestly supportive outlook for corn, wheat, and soybe...
The trade deficit in goods and services came in at $77.6 billion in May, slightly smaller than the consensus estimate of $78.4 billion. After a few months of relative stability, the trade deficit widened in May. The increase in the deficit for the month was due to both a rise in imports, which...
Every June combines begin their annual sweep across the winter wheat fields of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. At the same time, USDA releases its Acreage and Crop Progress reports, providing the first comprehensive look at the size and condition of the crop. Most years the reports simply confirm...
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.