The Trump Administration’s placement of the U.S. Agency for International Development on ice has sparked a firestorm in Washington. Critics of the agency point to an NGO industrial complex that works contrary to some American policy goals and diverts money from needy Americans. Supporters say the agency saves lives and counters the influence of competitor nations like China. A headline in today’s Washington Post says, “Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms and businesses.” It says hundreds of tons of wheat is currently stranded in Houston. U.S. food aid was supposed to be exempt from aid stoppage but let’s put this all in some context. The U.S. is the world’s largest aid donor. No oth...
Weather concerns and the impacts of the war in Iran helped push wheat and corn to sharp gains Tuesday, with both markets blowing past key technical resistance levels. The weather is now coupled with geopolitical tensions that look increasingly hard to resolve, which is giving funds the perfect...
Congress is moving forward with its FY 2027 spending bills, while also still working to address FY 2026 funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is still in a shutdown. The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and passed its FY 2027 bill. The House bill prov...
The overarching concern for China is that the rising cost of energy will reduce global trade demand at the same time that countries are becoming more protectionist. Trump Visit to China President Trump’s visit to China is in just over two weeks, though some question whether the trip...
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.