The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the March Consumer Price Index (CPI) today, showing that it rose 0.9 percent, seasonally adjusted, month over month, after being up 0.3 percent in February, and rose 3.3 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. Energy was the biggest gainer, up 12.5 percent, with fuel oil up 44.2 percent and gasoline up 21.2 percent. Gasoline accounted for nearly three-quarters of the monthly CPI. The energy index was impacted by the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz; there are an estimated 3,200 ships that have been blocked from passing through the strait. Gas and fuel prices are expected to reverse once the prices normalize; however, the timing of that is uncertain at b...
What You Need to Know Today: Declining crop conditions ratings and shaky results from the Pro Farmer crop tour sent grains sharply higher on Tuesday. The Pro Farmer tour in Ohio pegged the state yield at 180.18 BPA, about 5.5 BPA below the tour’s 2025 estimate. Similarly, the Pro Farmer...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Egypt is the largest importer of Brazilian maize in the first six months of 2026. Egypt imported about 28.4 percent of maize exports, or about 1.7 million MT. Iran was the third-largest importer at 14.5 percent, or 900,000 MT, fol...
Based on a Depression-era statute, President Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of exports to the U.S., or about 5.2 percent of the $383 billion worth of goods the U.S. imported from Canada in 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Of that total, about $39.3 billion was agricu...
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.