The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) made some noteworthy changes to its economic outlook at last week’s meeting, revising its forecast of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) to 1.5 percent for 2019 and 1.9 percent for 2020. The PCE is the standard measure used by the Fed for inflation excluding ag and energy. The March PCE forecast was 1.8 percent for this year and 2 percent for 2020. Of course, the Fed’s target for inflation is 2 percent. The downward revised forecast is therefore a precursor to the FOMC considering a rate cut to bump inflation up to that target. The June meeting was a dot-plot meeting, which involves the Fed releasing a chart of the members’ outlook on future interest r...
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
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.