Farm Bill Trouble The conservative Freedom Caucus flexed its muscle in holding up the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) in becoming Speaker of the U.S. House. Based on the Caucus’s past positions on Farm Bill programs, they are likely to prevent passage of new legislation this year. During consideration of the 2018 Farm Bill, the Caucus sought to phaseout all farm programs including subsidies to the crop insurance program. They were a driving force behind the proposed deep cuts in SNAP domestic food assistance programs. Ultimately, the bill failed in the House as Democrats opposed the SNAP reductions and the Freedom Caucus voted no because the cuts were not deep enough. Aggie Gets Ways & Means The election of...
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...
The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) enters its mandated six-year review on 1 July. The original intent of the review is outlined in Article 34.7, which obligates members to: Provide recommendations and decide on appropriate actions. Extend the USMCA for another 16 years and meet aga...
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.