The population in Africa is projected to nearly double from 1.34 billion in 2020 to 2.5 billion by 2050. By contrast, the rest of the world’s population over that same period is expected to increase by less than 10 percent. Over that period, Sub-Saharan Africa will go from 16.7 percent of the world’s population living on 14 percent of the world’s arable land, to 25 percent living on that same share of land. The amount of land could be sufficient but not based on its current low-yield output. Investment is needed and the region currently has low credit availability relative to arable land. This is especially true when compared with Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The FAO does not provide recent data on FDI inflows to Afri...
Regional News Egypt reiterated plans to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat supplies for the country’s subsidized bread program by 2028, although the target remains ambitious given current production and consumption dynamics. Egypt consumes approximately 21 MMT of wheat annually, with rough...
The Trump Administration is planning a suspension of tariff rate quotas (TRQs) on beef from all exporters for 200 days as a means to address high beef prices in the U.S. U.S. cattle and beef prices have increased based on exceptionally strong consumer demand, the smallest U.S. cattle herd in 75...
Tax Policy Teed Up The debate over taxes on billionaires is heating up a larger fight over tax policy for the next U.S. Congress. This is good news because a fight solely over whether the wealthy are evil overlooks many larger issues plaguing the system. The journalist Josh Barro says that ever...
Nonfarm payrolls rose 115,000 in April, beating the consensus expectation for a gain of 65,000. Payroll gains for February and March were revised down by a combined 16,000, resulting in a net gain of 99,000, including revisions. The largest increases in April were health care and social a...
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.