Today the war in Iran has hit its 10th day. Iranian forces have sustained their retaliatory strikes on US military assets and other key infrastructure in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The latest Iranian attacks on Bahrain have damaged a water desalination plant. Further, more than a week after the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 28 February, Iranian authorities have named his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new leader. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes on oil facilities continue. The price of global benchmark Brent crude surged to $119.50 per barrel on Monday, its highest level since 2022, as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains at a standstill. The Strait of Hormuz, which transports about...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: The U.S. and Iran resumed missile strikes after a brief pause in fighting, raising concerns that the five-month conflict could expand across the Middle East. Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles, Kuwait reported a fatal strike, and drone attacks damaged two natural...
The Senate Agriculture Committee will take up the farm bill next week, and a number of amendments targeting the meat industry are expected to be offered. Two of the most potentially damaging are the Schumer amendment, based on his bill, the Family Grocery and Farmer Relief Act, and mandatory co...
Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, published in 1770, is of a timeless quality. It is a 425-line lament for a disappearing rural world, where prosperous villages give way to larger estates, fewer farmers, and emigration. One passage even follows those leaving for the new colony of Georgia...