Political Fallout USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said yesterday, “Candidly, our view — and I’ve expressed this to EU officials — our view is that their approach may very well result in reduced production…I think our approach is better.” When asked to clarify his remarks, he demurred that he was referring to organic production incentives. However, his comment likely applies to the broader issue of conservation measures on farms. Members of Congress from farm states insist that federal pursuit of more environmentally friendly production practices need to remain voluntary – using carrots and not sticks. They are no doubt watching the political fallout in Europe over the use of mandatory obligations. ...
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.