In a rare display of compromise (if not bipartisanship), the Trump administration and Congress reached a two-year budget deal. The plan lays out a top line level for discretionary spending for FY 2020, sets the maximum target at $50 billion more in FY 2021 and suspends the federal debt limit until July 2021. That takes the contentious budget and debt limit debates off the docket until after the 2020 election. The new spending limits/targets would replace those in the last bipartisan agreement, the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), that was scheduled to last through FY 2021. These limits apply only to funds that are appropriated annually and does not impact crop programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or other mandatory...
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.