Fire with Fire Some U.S. senators have introduced legislation that would prohibit states from enacting laws dictating how livestock are produced in other states. The bill will go nowhere and is thus a waste of hot breath. There are 20 states that have challenged California’s Proposition 12, which is at the heart of the senators’ legislative focus. Most of the 20 states have small, rural populations that do not drink a lot of wine. But collectively, they account for 18 percent of U.S. wine disappearance, which is mostly sourced from California. Their consumption accounts for $7.2 billion in sales, mostly benefiting California. A better way to get attention in Sacramento is to structure state requirements on grape growing since C...
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.
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...