India's Economic Slowdown: Time for a Stimulus The numbers are finally out; the Indian economy grew a dismal 5.3 percent in the last quarter (January-March 2012), and the final 2011/12 growth is at 6.5 percent. The growth in the last quarter came as a shock to both Indian economists and the government, and it is the lowest figure in nine years.In India, the effects of an economic slowdown are evident and can be seen and felt everywhere. The rupee is in a free-fall, stock markets are under pressure and are down, and real estate prices have been down for quite some time now. Inflation is at a high and people are paying much higher prices for their daily needs, be it bread, pulses, meat, milk, eggs or sugar. With fuel prices hiked, even out...
Key Takeaways: President Trump announced $8 billion in additional agricultural assistance through the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, as USDA projects farm fuel and oil expenses will increase 28.8 percent in 2026. The package follows $12 billion in earlier relief, while government farm payments w...
Key Takeaways: A student group from the University of Chicago is protesting to bring back onion futures trading. Trading in onion futures was banned in 1958 following a spectacular bout of market manipulation that resulted in a corner of the physical market. The ban on onion futures led t...
Beef packer margins deteriorated to $141/head last week, down $55 from the prior week as fed cattle prices strengthened while the Choice cutout remained nearly unchanged. The cutout held near $373/cwt while fed cattle prices climbed $4/cwt to $224/cwt, narrowing processor profits. Despite the d...
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.