Overall, USDA is seeking a reduction in discretionary outlays of $2.638 billion from what it is projected to receive in FY 2014 under the continuing resolution.The House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on agriculture will hold a hearing on Friday with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack testifying about the department's FY 2015 budget request. This is the first in a series of events and deadlines for the appropriations process. The subcommittee has also announced that members' submission requests must be received by 31 March 2014. The Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on agriculture will hold a hearing on 4 April. Much of what Secretary Vilsack has to say has been previewed by the president's FY 2015 budget proposal. O...
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.