Stick Picked In U.S. agriculture, the head of USDA is sugar daddy, handing out checks, buying up surpluses and generally using carrots to obtain environmental improvements. By contrast, EPA is the stick side of the equation, laying down regulatory compliance requirements that impose costs on farmers. President-Elect Joe Biden’s selection of Tom Vilsack as the distributor of carrots was welcomed, his pick today of Michael Regan as the bearer of sticks at EPA is less certain. On the hopeful side, Regan has been focused on industrial pollution and his supporters want him to continue his effort on environmental justice – reducing the disproportionate burden of pollution on minority and poor communities. He is from a rural No...
What You Need to Know Today: The Brazilian real surged to start the week after a surprise election result in which right-wing Flavio Bolsonaro won the first round of the election. The swing in the U.S. dollar/Brazilian real (USD/BRL) exchange rate caused soybeans to jump sharply higher in earl...
Key Takeaways: Harvest pressure is fundamentally a timing issue: supply arrives much faster than demand can adjust, creating temporary weakness that can occur across crops and regions. The intensity of that pressure depends less on crop size alone than on how quickly grain moves into the syste...
Pork packer margins closed out September as positive, marking an improvement in a challenging 2026. According to Sterling Marketing, for the week ending 26 September, pork packer margins were $6.98 per head, which is up from a loss of $0.13 the previous week, more than double the margin of $3.9...
From WPI Consulting
Infrastructure investment due diligence
On behalf of a Canadian oilseed processer WPI's team provided market analysis, econometric modeling and financial due diligence in support of a $24 million-dollar investment in a Ukrainian crush plant. Consistent with WPI's findings, local production to supply the plant and the facility's output have expanded exponentially since the investment. WPI has conducted parallel work on behalf of U.S., South American and European clients, both private and public, in the agri-food space.