Maize and sorghum prices in eastern Africa are at record levels due to last year’s severe drought. Meanwhile, one organization has warned of an infestation in southern Africa this year that could be a more significant threat to crops than the current outbreak of fall armyworms. Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Egypt’s pound has experienced a recovery over the past few weeks, increasing in value from 18.8 to 15.5 against the USD. The government’s Budget Committee has said that it expects the trend to continue and that the currency could reach 13 or better to the U.S. dollar. This change could be as much as 30 percent and would certainly improve the future situation for grain importers in Egypt. The committee says that t...
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...
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.