Farm Policy without Economics The policy brief "Toward Healthy Food and Farms" by the Union of Concerned Scientists uses neither science nor economics in its recommendations for a new Farm Bill. It recommends "forward-thinking agriculture policies focused on local foods ... increased investment in local food systems, including farmers markets, food husband community supported agriculture programs." The Union claims this will result in healthier food consumption and environmental sustainability but little science of economics. It contends that it will create more jobs, which is true only because of the inefficiencies it proposes to impose on the industry. As noted in "A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550," migration back to...
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
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.