Presenting a roundup of those political issues of interest to agriculture...Following is an end-of-the-week roundup of some of the politic issues of interest to agriculture from inside Washington, DC. Support for Perdue More than 500 groups and businesses sent a letter to the Senate Agriculture Committee endorsing the confirmation of former Georgia Governor George “Sonny” Perdue as secretary of agriculture. The letter included a statement that said, “We are looking forward to having his tested leadership and experience at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).” As noted here after the election (see Ag Perspectives, 11 November 2016), “There is a good chance for the first farmer to be nominated as USDA secretary since Ronald Reagan nom...
What You Need to Know Today: The corn and soybean markets closed slightly higher in low-volume trade. The wheat market was mixed, with HRW continuing its downward trek on improved moisture. As expected, the bearish cattle on feed report drove down cattle prices and pulled hogs down with it. Mi...
Monday, 25 May is a U.S. holiday, and both the markets and our office will be closed. Please note that the next issue of Ag Perspectives will be published on Tuesday, 26 May. The WPI staff wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend...
USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report was released today. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity amounted to 11.6 million head, 102 percent of last year. Source: USDA, WPI Placements were up, but part of that is attributable to persistent drought c...
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.