World Perspectives

More Subsidies for Scale; APEP Trade; African Humor

More Subsidies for Scale The Biden Administration blames large meat packers for higher consumer prices. Its solution has been to subsidize the startup of small meat packers with grants (Value-Added Producer Grants) and loans. The program has been a smashing success. Over the past year the average retail price for beef is up 8.1 percent. Pork prices despite a reported oversupply, are up 0.8 percent. Retailers are offering livestock producers higher prices and small packers cannot keep up with the supply of animals being offered.  The solution being pushed by smaller, populist farm groups like National Farmers Union and the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association is more subsidies. They are backing new legislation called “The Strength...

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Summary of Futures

Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.47/bushel, up $0.0325 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.155/bushel, up $0.0575 from yesterday's close.  Jan 26 Soybeans closed at $10.5325/bushel, up $0.04 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $301.9/short ton, up $0.8 from y...

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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.

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