France is insisting that if the EU does not invoke a ban on imports of hogs and pork as a result of the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDv), it will unilaterally impose a restriction. Antibiotic Anti-intellectualism The California State Senate approved a bill regulating the use of antibiotics in livestock. Fortunately, the proposed restrictions would only apply to antibiotics used by humans. Former USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Administrator Richard Raymond points out that there continues to be immense confusion in the media and among politicians about the situation. He uses the recent report on the issue by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an example. WHO cited drug-resistant infections in humans (gonorrhea and...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. weather is getting more attention this week as conditions vary greatly across the western, central, and eastern corn belts, with the different regions battling dryness and too much rain simultaneously. The ProFarmer Crop Tour began today in Indiana and Nebrask...
Key Takeaways: Argentina is on pace for a record corn crop and record exports in the current marketing year, with abundant supplies likely to keep the country highly competitive in global export markets. Argentina’s record exportable surplus is allowing it to offer highly competitive pri...
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.