Food Inflation Importance Researchers from Boston College, UC-Berkley and the University of Chicago found (see NBER Working Paper No. 26237) that consumers rely upon the frequency and size of price changes during their grocery shopping to assess U.S. inflationary conditions. The metric is understandable from the standpoint that grocery shopping is the most direct and regular exposure that consumers have to product prices. However, the Federal Reserve looks at core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices since they tend to be more volatile. The researchers contend that citizens and policymakers reading inflationary signals from two very different sources risks the occurrence of large and dangerous mistakes. U.S. Funding Dead...
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.