No Cooperation at Forum Apparently, USDA's September WASDE report was not sufficiently comforting on food prices. France has sent notice of a "Rapid Response Forum" meeting to be held on 16 October, which publicity-wise also happens to be United Nations World Food Day. The French government has made public several goals, including a temporary halt in biofuel production and the creation of a global grain reserve. Europe's recent shift away from ambitious biofuel production from food crops might get sympathy from the State Department, but Paris is unlikely to get much cooperation from ethanol's biggest cheerleader, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. Additionally, large fiscal deficits and expensive grain makes the creation of a grain reserve seem...
Key Takeaways: Drought remains a major threat to global agricultural production, particularly in regions with limited rainfall and growing water scarcity. Commercially available drought-tolerant traits in corn, soybeans, and wheat have generally delivered modest yield improvements, limiting th...
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.