U.S. flour exports were down slightly for the first quarter of the year, but that is generally par for the industry. Turkey produces one-third the volume of wheat as the U.S. but exports three times the volume of flour. Some suspect subsidies are a determinant of this outcome. Of course, a large portion of U.S. flour exports are via food aid, a form of subsidy. The U.S. was a major exporter of wheat flour in the aftermath of WWII, but many recipient countries realized that flour mills were an affordable way to create value-added jobs and began building their own capacity. U.S. flour exports have stabilized but with increased attention to cash in lieu of commodities in international food aid, the trade may face further contraction. This mea...
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.