An anniversary of a dubious sort occurred last week. It was five years ago, on 15 September 2008, that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The collapse of the well-known, well-respected global financial services company sent shock waves rippling around the world. The company, founded in 1850, began as a marketer and trader of cotton. It branched into other areas, including financial services in the early 1900s, and evolved into a merchant bank. Its failure is the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Lehman's collapse is sometimes pointed to as the cause of the financial crisis of 2008/09 that led to the severe economic recession from which the world is still recovering. This is not true, of course. The fall of Lehman's did not cause the...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans continued to accelerate, with USDA reporting another 558 KMT sold to China and 236 KMT to unknown destinations. Combined with sales announced Wednesday and Thursday, the latest purchases bring the three-day total to approximately...
Key Takeaways: With the fall calf run now upon us, producers are finally getting a glimpse of what their realized profits will be for 2026. Some producers may have already obtained a strong estimate of 2026 revenues, especially if calves were forward sold in, for example, the mid-summer...
As fall begins, wild migratory birds are starting their seasonal migration. That has the industry and government officials worried about the potential spread, again, of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Some members of Congress have called for the United States to be prepared for a pote...
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.