Bali Heat: In preparations for the WTO Ministerial in Bali in December, the U.S. is emphasizing eliminating export restrictions, liberalizing trade and removing other agricultural market distortions. This is a broader and more substantial approach to the food security initiative being pushed by India that involves converting public stock holding from an amber box to a green box measure. Meanwhile, India has responded to the U.S. attack on localization policies by justifiably challenging energy subsidies in America, including local content requirements.Long-Haul Local: Phil Karsting, currently chief of staff to U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), has been named administrator of USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS). There are two lar...
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.