Whenever it becomes time for Congress to create a new farm bill (technically, to amend the 1938 and 1949 legislation), we are amazed by the number of diverse interests attracted to the process of making agricultural policy for the next several years.The first U.S. farm program designed to raise prices that farmers received for major crops was passed in 1933 as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's Great Depression era New Deal. Its goal was to achieve this through provisions for price supports and production limits. The cost of the original farm program was to be offset by a tax on agricultural processors, but in 1936 this was ruled to be unconstitutional. The farm bill was amended that same year to authorize payment incentives for plantin...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.