A provision in the 2014 Farm Bill requires the U.S. EPA to create an advisory committee of agricultural specialists to advise the agency’s scientists before they make rules considered harmful to the sector. The EPA has largely ignored the requirement, and now the U.S. House is responding. Blame Game The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) shows that life expectancy, education and per capita income have declined consistently in Zimbabwe over the past 40 years of rule by Robert Mugabe. The country is rich in platinum, diamonds and other natural resources, but Human Rights Watch says the wealth has been plundered by Mugabe and his supporters.Venezuela had slow gains in the HDI during the rule of Hugo Chavez, but it is now experiencing a decli...
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.