Last week, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack charged the U.S. meat industry with unethically profiting off of Americans during the pandemic. A charge totally refuted by the facts, including those unveiled by USDA career staff economists and witnesses at a Congressional oversight hearing. Now he is feigning concern that large meat packing companies cannot ensure adequate food for Americans during a crisis. Specifically, he is quoted saying: [we’re] “better off having multiple plants in multiple locations — smaller facilities to produce enough product. And that may mean a little less profit, but it means that if you have an incident like this that threatens your workforce, you'll always have sufficient operation capacity&hel...
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.
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...