The political class is the chattering class. With the election over, most denizens in Washington cannot help but spread -- or even create -- some informed or not-so-informed gossip about what might happen in the future. Yesterday there was talk about which Republican potential 2016 presidential candidates were already starting to add Iowa to their schedules, and this morning strategy sessions were being held over some farm bill ideas for 2017. Here's the rundown.USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack may move from his position. Speculated reasons for this vary from his wife not winning her congressional race in Iowa to perhaps other posts in the Obama Administration. Anyway, it would not be uncommon for a change. President George W. Bush changed from...
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.