Doing Good to Be Bad Four large food companies (Danone, Mars, Nestle and Unilever) have formed the Sustainable Food Policy Alliance, which will focus on producing products with better environmental and health impacts. They have received a great deal of positive publicity for the initiative, but there may be a dark side to it all. An estimated 90 percent of the 250 largest companies now produce annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. University of Chicago economist John List analyzed these programs to understand the benefits they must provide to encourage such high adoption rates. The intuitive conclusion is that CSR helps the demand side by building customer loyalty, but the data revealed something different. List found that...
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
Infrastructure investment due diligence
On behalf of a Canadian oilseed processer WPI's team provided market analysis, econometric modeling and financial due diligence in support of a $24 million-dollar investment in a Ukrainian crush plant. Consistent with WPI's findings, local production to supply the plant and the facility's output have expanded exponentially since the investment. WPI has conducted parallel work on behalf of U.S., South American and European clients, both private and public, in the agri-food space.