Regional Updates MIDDLE EAST/MEDITERRANEAN COMMENTS Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture is making efforts to reduce the planting of major water-consuming crops such as wheat and rice by having farmers switch to other crops like quinoa, which is said to only need one tenth the amount needed by rice. It will not be easy to convince them to do so unless there is a market for their production as there is for wheat and rice. Egypt reports that local wheat purchases have now topped 1.8 MMT against the target of 4 MMT. It also says that excluding those stocks, the current wheat supply will be sufficient to cover consumption for four months. Iraqi officials report that local wheat purchases exceed 300,000 MT with the total projected to reach...
What You Need to Know Today: After a period of limited activity, USDA reported a sizeable 613 KMT in soybean export sales, including 330 KMT to China and 283 KMT to unknown destinations, potentially also China. The purchases represent a meaningful pickup in demand and bring China closer to ful...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets remain mixed with Capesize vessels seeing continued pressure from weaker demand while fixtures and rate strength gradually increases towards the smaller vessel classes. Tanker markets are pulling back from their recent highs as tonnage moves out of the Mid...
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.