Australia and New Zealand do not practice perfect market economics, but their agricultural policies can be better than many others. Fundamental Food Economics EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker kowtowed to the demands of Eastern European member states to ensure that they received the same quality food products in their markets that are received in the richer parts of Europe. Some say that the differences reflect different tastes, which is really to say different economics. Juncker says he doesn’t “like the idea that there would be some kind of second class citizens in Europe,” but it is how market economics work. Per capita income is $15,000 in Romania and $29,000 in Slovakia, while the Germans and Dutch are at $50,000. That huge...
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...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
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.