China’s relaxation of its one-child policy has some speculating about future food demand impacts. However, there are several mitigating factors. Data Smorgasbord USDA collects a myriad of data – likely billions of data points. As society becomes more complex and the food sector more diverse, the issue arises as to what information is worthwhile. The agency has already begun collecting data on organic, pastured pork, biofuel and non-GM grain, but the question is where else should it go about the expensive task of curating numbers. The food market is splintering into hundreds of pieces that include bST-free dairy, cage-free, hormone-free, gestation crate-free, ractopamine-free, no antibiotics, etc. Technology makes collections some...
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.
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...