The U.S. rice industry motivated its politicians to attack USTR Katherine Tai last week as she made the rounds on Capitol Hill. The main point of their ire is India, which they claim uses subsidies far more than WTO rules allow. Indeed, India has subsidized agriculture to the point that its rice exports have doubled over the past decade and now constitutes 40 percent of global trade. Its sugar exports have also doubled and, at 8.5 MMT, it became the world’s sixth largest wheat exporter this year. Of course, U.S. rice producers are not innocent. They are also heavily subsidized with government support in some years representing over half of farm income. Globally, rice is a trader’s nightmare as governments erect some of th...
There are plenty of major headlines moving across the markets today, but the reaction beneath them remains cautious. Crude oil is holding steady despite reports of progress involving the Strait of Hormuz, corn and soybeans remain tied to changing weather forecasts, and wheat continues to weigh...
Key Takeaways: Sugarcane is the world’s largest crop by total production volume, surpassing major commodities such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, and supplies roughly 80 percent of global sugar production. Sugarcane’s perennial growth cycle allows farmers to harvest multiple crops f...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. and Iran could “today or tomorrow” reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Despite the Secretary’s claims, an attack on a vessel off the Omani coast suggests plenty of risk remains in forming a lo...
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.