Great Power Struggle Deceased U.S. Senator John McCain called Russia a “gas station masquerading as a country” but it is also a major grocery store, especially when combined with Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is now threatening global energy, fertilizer, and food supplies. Rising prices for energy, food and interest on money is a triple whammy for the citizenry and consequently for politicians. Inflation adjusted disposable income in the U.S. has now sunk below trend and savings as a share of disposable income is back below pre-pandemic levels. This is a bad situation in rich countries and a disaster for poor developing ones trying to service debt. Crucial will be maneuvering by China and India. If China sticks with Russia, Mo...
What You Need to Know Today: U.S. launches naval escort operations in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran attacks UAE oil infrastructure, escalating geopolitical risk and supporting energy and broader commodity markets Biofuel demand entering uncharted territory, with soyoil valuation increasingly di...
The Middle East is said to be undergoing a transformation as economic priorities transcend security concerns. This is evidenced by diversification away from oil and the UAE’s departure from OPEC. Meanwhile, the Palestine issue has been deprioritized, and Iran has emerged as more destabili...
All eyes are shifting to the Senate following the House passage of a farm bill last Thursday. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Arkansas) is targeting the end of May or early June for a bill markup. According to Boozman, the House “going ahead and passing something was re...
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.