On Sunday, there will be a presidential election in Brazil where the Rousseff government has developed and implemented a tax credit for ethanol imports. In the U.S., EPA's proposed reduction in statutory levels for ethanol has become a political issue, particularly in the Iowa Senate race.Things in Brasilia are similar to things in Washington with the focus on ethanol and politics. In the U.S., the 2014 Required Volume Obligations (RVOs) for blending biofuels are still not set a full 11 months after the statutory deadline and just more than 30 days before the U.S. congressional elections. Last fall, the EPA proposed a reduction in the statutory levels for ethanol for the first time since 2006 when the U.S. mandate for biofuels was establish...
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.