Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA COMMENTS Egypt has said that wheat production for 2020 should reach about 9.5 MMT with between 3.0 and 3.5 MMT being purchased by the government. According to U.S. export inspection information, Egypt’s purchase of U.S. soybeans doubled this week to about 172,000 MT. Morocco is suffering from its second drought year in a row with wheat production expected to be as much as 40 percent below average. Official numbers from Morocco see a drop of 4.3 percent in total agriculture production and growth of only 2.3 percent compared to more normal levels of 4.6 percent growth, all of this is said to be due to reduced grain production. In 2019, Morocco spent $960 million on wheat import...
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.