The U.S. suffered from drought last year and the current weather has made it too wet to plant so far this year. Meanwhile, China has been suffering from animal disease and oversupply in the pork market. But farm woes extend beyond the U.S.-Sino agricultural axis, and they are being accompanied by policy changes that impact the bottom line.Brazil: Low sugar prices and dropping oil prices have led to the government's decision to incentivize more ethanol production. Currently, ethanol production faces a tax of 12 centavos ($0.06) per liter. This tax is applied to a number of sectors and accounts for about 20 percent of total federal revenue; however, it could be reduced to zero as early as next month, and is likely to face overall reform by...
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.