As WPI reported on 17 July, the recently passed budget reconciliation bill in the House Budget Committee includes $12 billion in emergency farm assistance. This would be the seventh of the past nine years with ad hoc farm payments (FY2018, FY2019, FY2020, FY2022, FY2023, FY2024, and potentially FY2026). Ohio State University professor Carl Zulauf has published a paper on the farm safety net, arguing that over the last 50 years, the crop market has not covered the cost of producing the eight program crops for which USDA computes a cost of production. However, these losses have more than been covered by farm safety-net payments, especially when accounting for ad hoc payments. Thus, the farm safety net has become a profit center rather than a...
What You Need to Know Today: Grain futures fell hard overnight after the USDA’s Crop Conditions report showed better-than-expected ratings for corn and soybeans, despite difficult weather last week. The Conditions report was even more bearish in light of meaningfully beneficial rains acr...
Key Takeaways: New Mexico’s Clean Transportation Fuel Program expands demand for low-carbon fuels and creates another market for renewable feedstocks, adding incremental pressure to already limited supplies of lower-carbon inputs. Growing competition for waste-based feedstocks such as an...
Beef packer margins improved to -$130/head last week, up $44 from the prior week as sharply lower fed cattle prices more than offset continued seasonal weakness in the Choice cutout. The cutout declined to $373/cwt while fed cattle prices fell to $238/cwt, allowing packer spreads to recover for...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.