Disagreeing to Talk Developing countries oppose using a draft WTO text on agriculture as a basis for further negotiation, despite the fact it is merely a discussion document. By contrast, Australia, the U.S., EU, Switzerland, and Cairns group acknowledge its imperfections and have agreed to discuss amending it. The rationale for opposition is clear – just like the legal theory that possession is nine-tenths of the law, it is easier to defend and thus more difficult to amend words that are already on paper. The reason that the draft text is more acceptable to the rich countries is two-fold: 1) it involves more of what lies at the heart of the WTO, trade liberalization; and 2) being rich means being powerful and things do not happen wi...
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.