Belarus is in the news, and not in a good way. The country’s leader since the fall of the Soviet Union (28 years) has been Alexander Lukashenko, also called the last dictator in Europe. To ensure that he will be dictator for life, he declared that death was the only way he will relinquish his office. Within the former Soviet bloc, Belarus has remained the strongest adherent to a centrally planned economy. As a result, its agriculture has been slow to adapt to competitive forces (e.g. use of collective and peasant farming). The geography is mostly marshland and forests, but it produces barley, wheat, livestock, and other products. Notably, it is the world’s eighth largest producer of potatoes and has had off- and on-again...
What You Need to Know Today: China’s state-run COFCO, in statements on Tuesday, implied that U.S. corn exports were currently uneconomical but hinted that the Middle Kingdom would import 3.5 MMT of the feed grain this year, with 1 MMT likely sourced from the U.S. Another drone attack has...
Tanker-tracking data shows a smaller recovery in oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz than previously thought. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, speaking by video to an international energy conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said that oil moving through the strait was back to 80 to 90 percent...
Key Takeaways: While soybean, palm, sunflower, and rapeseed oils dominate global vegetable oil markets, premium oils such as olive, avocado, coconut, and sesame command substantially higher prices due to their distinctive flavors, nutritional characteristics, and specialized culinary uses.. Ol...
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.