Contrary to President Trump’s latest boast, trade wars are not good and not easy to win. U.S. agriculture now feels threatened by the effort to protect the American steel and aluminum sector. What is notable, though, is the similarity between food and steel. Production of both is deemed in the national interest; thus, they find state support that eventually results in excess production, and it becomes difficult to unwind the resulting distorted markets. More advanced steelmaking employs alloys like manganese, nickel and chromium, but the fundamentals are basically iron ore plus carbon and the energy to transform them. Japan is the number three steel producer in the world, and yet it has very limited domestic sources of either ore or...
What You Need to Know Today: Commodities were mostly lower across the board today after yesterday’s Federal Reserve meeting hinted at a potential interest rate hike later in 2026. The dollar index reached its highest level in over a year, and a strong dollar makes U.S. agricultural expor...
Tomorrow is the Juneteenth federal holiday, and the USDA, along with the rest of the federal government and the CME, will be closed, so the monthly Cattle on Feed report was released a day early. The total number of cattle on feed in feedlots with 1,000 head or more capacity on 1 June amounted...
From WPI Consulting
Accountability and a comprehensive approach to export programming
WPI’s team helped construct a strategic approach to develop, implement, and track promotional activities in 8 key regions across the globe for an agricultural export association. With continued progress measurement and strategic advisory services from WPI, the association has seen its ROI from investments in promotional programming increase by 44 percent over the past 5 years. Not only does this type of holistic approach to organizational strategy provide measurable results to track and analyze, it fosters top-down and bottom-up organizational accountability.