Some on the political right in the U.S. have joined their ideological opposites on the left by taking decidedly “anti-American” positions on trade policy. Recent examples from the left include biologics, ISDS and trade agreements. Food Modernity Modern telecommunications cannot advance quickly enough to satisfy most users but, when it comes to food, there are factions that revile modernism. They promote the concept of “pastoralism” whereby grateful, well-meaning farmers on small plots of land using just grit and nature’s gifts are able to produce foods that are supposedly more sustainable and healthier. They hold disdain for big, technologically advanced agriculture, accusing it of imposing great harm on the earth and on people. Manual te...
What You Need to Know Today: Agricultural commodities were mostly lower on the day, with red-hot soyoil a notable exception. Export sales were a bit underwhelming, particularly for corn with export sales down 52 percent week-over-week. The weakness in ag markets tracked crude oil weakness wit...
With the war in Iran affecting fuel and fertilizer prices, higher tariffs, weak commodity prices, ag labor constraints, and other factors, farm bankruptcies are now at a 6-year high, a signal of growing stress. During the month of April, 62 Chapter 12 bankruptcies were filed, which is a 1...
Food Inflation The Open Markets Institute, which is notably funded by several “anonymous” donors and liberal foundations, obtained a guest editorial in the New York Times in which they blame agribusiness concentration for higher grocery prices. This is their schtick and it is politi...
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.