While USDA has determined that it does not have the authority to designate cottonseed as a minor oilseed under the 2014 Farm Bill, it did announce the eligibility of certain crops (i.e., cotton) for commodity certificates.The National Cotton Council and more than 100 members of Congress (bipartisan) together with approximately 375 ag lenders had urged USDA Secretary Vilsack to designate cottonseed as a minor oilseed under the 2014 Farm Bill (see Ag Perspectives, 21 December). Such action would have qualified it for farm bill subsidies, most prominently under the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program. This would also treat cottonseed differently from lint, which is no longer eligible for such payments per a WTO ruling in a case brought against U...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.