Aging farmers and the myth that we’ll run out of them continues to be a media favorite story. The latest involves worry over attracting young people to the profession in places like Africa. Post-Brexit Ag Policy Britain receives back about 23 percent of its membership fee to the EU in the form of CAP payments to its farmers. Despite those payments amounting to over half of their income, these farmers have long complained about the oppressive rules and restricted markets that are attached. There is recognition that farming is risky, and it would become even more so if the subsidy ends. Still, some insist that any continued payments be directed at societal goals such as green space enhancement. Truthfully, resources need to be directed at m...
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.