Farm Bill Intrigue The Senate has had its say on a 2012 Farm Bill, but on the House side negotiations are hot and heavy over whether it can even pass a simple extension of policy with some added drought disaster assistance. House Agriculture Committee Ranking member Colin Peterson (D-Minnesota) seemed to counter USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack's hyperventilation over the need for a bill by saying, "There is no crisis here, other than it would be nice to get this done." At the same time, Peterson says he will not support passage of a simple extension. And Senate Democrats are expressing disfavor with the simple extension concept. The House Republican leadership is in a pickle over how to proceed. A simple extension with added disaster provisio...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.