Regional Updates MEDITERRANEAN/MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA/AFRICA – MEA REGION Iraq’s government announced record local wheat purchases of 6.3 MMT. Iraq is now self-sufficient in wheat. The government says that this will help it to ensure long-term food security and economic stability. Egypt’s wheat reserves are at 6.9 months consumption, as reported by the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade. Egypt’s electricity stoppages (daily power cuts) were planned to end last Sunday but this has not happed as cuts continue. Press reports say that the situation has been very bad for the local poultry industry that depends on electricity for air conditioning for poultry houses and hatcheries. The poultry mortality rate...
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.
What You Need to Know Today: Iran says its definition of the Strait of Hormuz is now a “vast operation area” that stretches from Jask to Siri Island. The White House said President Trump did not sign a suspension of the TRQs on beef imports but is “finalizing potential...
If the media headlines and Trump critics are to be believed, President Trump is headed to Beijing this Thursday in a weakened position. China is in control, it has the upper hand, and expectations are very low. These are the same critics that argue against overly simplistic zero-sum analyses in...