Considering all the recent chatter about free trade, fair trade, NAFTA, steel and aluminum quotas, etc., a farmer from eastern Montana has pointed out that perhaps the U.S. should put tariffs on Canadian spring wheat. The U.S. has always imported a significant amount of that from Canada and also durum. The flow south is easy logistically, and the border is wide open. However, it is more difficult to ship wheat into Canada because of its many restrictive rules specific to varieties, grading standards, etc. In fact, U.S. imports of Canadian spring wheat are up from 42 million bushels (1.14 MMT) in MY 2016/17 to 74 million bushels (2 MMT) in MY 2017/18, an increase of 176 percent and the second-largest import number in 20 years. Canada has b...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.