Wheat GM Wheat Saga Continues Argentina’s lone GM wheat variety (HB4 wheat from Bioceres) continues to generate polemic from various outside interests. The Brazilian Wheat Industry Association said last week that if the Brazilian government approves Argentina’s GM variety for import, they will stop buying wheat from Argentina. Brazilian millers are opposed to processing GM wheat as no one knows what the consumer reaction will be. Despite the fact Brazilian millers like the quality of Argentine wheat and are used to working with it, which accounts for 80 percent of Brazil’s annual wheat imports, they claim to have other origins on standby to supply their needs. Such a dispute could be damaging to both Brazil and Ar...
What You Need to Know Today: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House today as part of a highly anticipated three-day visit to the United States, marking his first visit to Washington in eleven years. Trade is expected to feature prominently in discussions with President Trump,...
Key Takeaways: The United States shifted from a decades-long agricultural trade surplus to a growing deficit, reaching roughly forty-one to forty-four billion dollars in recent fiscal years, a structural change rather than a cyclical dip. Brazil has overtaken the United States as the leading s...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets are steady/firmer this week with Handysize vessels making the biggest gains. In particular, strong grain demand has improved Handysize rates, along with charterers dipping down into the smaller vessel classes after the recent Panamax and Supra/Ultramax ral...
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.