Global dairy trade, which had been growing at a compound annual rate of 4.7 percent has slowed over the past couple of years. A primary reason has been China, where demand was curbed by COVID restrictions. The drop in demand coincided with reduced production, and higher prices countered some of the loss in volume. However, the industry is now hopeful that China’s reopening will bring a resurgence in demand. Feed costs have been high at the same time demand was muffled, a combination that has been particularly hard on major suppliers in the U.S., South America, EU and Oceania. Suppliers in Australia are benefiting from excellent pasture conditions and thus low hay prices. EU dairy cow numbers have been declining and may continue...
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.