As most expected, President Trump announced the U.S. was withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear pact with Iran with the intention of resuming sanctions against it and the countries that buy its oil. So certain were analysts that President Trump would do this that the actual announcement was anticlimactic. Technically, the pact still exists between Iran and the other signatories, including Great Britain, France and Germany, which all decried Trump’s action. There are rumors that some sort of agreement has been reached between the EPA and both pro- and anti-Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) interests that would allow year-round sales of E15. Assuming this is true, there must be other terms that persuaded the oil industry to sign on such a...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.