World Perspectives
livestock

Dissecting Beef

The Biden Administration is charging the meat packing industry with exploitation for elevated beef prices. Beef is certainly not the only industry with rising prices over the past year. In fact, beef inflation looks relatively modest next to the price spikes that have occurred in energy and transportation. Moreover, the charge is that market power due to the four-firm concentration level in meat packing has been the conduit to being able to significantly raise prices. However, four-firm concentration in the sector has been high for decades. Contrasting industry concentration with annual beef inflation rates raises some questions. For example, why was beef price inflation lower in 1995 than in 1992 when concentration had increased by 1995...

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feed-grains

WASDE Corn - Jan 2026

USDA’s Jan estimate for 2025/26 U.S. corn is for larger production and higher feed residual usage to result in greater ending stocks: Corn production is estimated at 17.0 billion bushels, up 269 million on a 0.5-bushel increase in yield to 186.5 bushels per acre and a 1.3-million acre ris...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.

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