Creating Farm Labor Shortage Bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress has not increased much since the departure of the divisive Mr. Trump, but agriculture continues to be one area of mutual trust. Next up is a narrow bill in the House next week that would provide a pathway for otherwise illegal farm laborers to achieve citizenship. It will also make adjustment to the H-2A farm worker temporary visa program, and toughen requirements for employers using the E-Verify program that verifies the authorization to work in the U.S. With over half the labor being illegal in some parts of U.S. agriculture, making the H-2A program work more easily is a desired outcome. However, creating a pathway to citizenship could cause a longer-term shortage of farm l...
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.