The FY 2020 budget process in Congress has begun. Under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (Section 301(d)), each of the congressional authorizing committees is to send a “views and estimates” letter to its respective chamber’s budget committee. On Thursday of last week, the House Agriculture Committee debated, approved and filed its letter accordingly. The message of that letter to House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky) could be distilled down to one request: fully fund the 2018 Farm Bill. The letter states: - “The Committee’s budget priorities are aligned with the full implementation of the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018.” - “The Committee took our duty to be fis...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and the latest retail sales data indicate that spending remains robust despite inflation. In September, total retail and food service sales rose more than 6 percent year-over-year, with food service spending up 7 percent and...
The Trump import plan for 300,000 MT of beef supplies used for ground beef, i.e., lean trim, from September through November has, according to Secretary Brooke Rollins, brought some relief to beef prices. The Executive Order states that the Secretary of Agriculture will analyze and review the m...
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.