Agriculture Key in Presidential Races Current Kenyan Trade Minister Betty Maina this week said her country’s goals ‘haven’t changed’ and still seeks a free trade agreement with the U.S. However, William Ruto was declared the winner in Kenya’s presidential race, and he has promised to increase investments in agriculture to wean the country off food imports. Ruto sold chickens and peanuts as a poor young person but since then he has been accused of aiding land grabs and he himself has acquired a chicken processing plant during his time in politics. He wants to spend $4.2 billion over five years boosting agricultural output and building up agribusiness. A similar battle is ongoing in Brazil where current P...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.