Much like a colonoscopy, every few years it is time for another farm bill, and the process of creating one is about as much fun. Passed in 2014, the current iteration is the 17th since the first farm bill was passed in 1933 during the Great Depression as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It expires in 2018, and the agriculture committees of the House and Senate began work on the next one several months ago. House Ag Committee Chairman Michael Conaway (R-TX) has indicated he hopes to have a bill put together by February 2018. The 2014 Farm Bill contains 12 titles, which cover commodities, conservation, trade, nutrition, credit, rural development, research and extension, forestry, horticulture, energy, and crop insurance...
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.