World Perspectives
feed-grains soy-oilseeds wheat

Rhyme Not Repeat

There is no proxy for the exact current global commodity situation, though it looks familiar at this juncture. Petroleum is arguably being over-produced, as are major crops like corn, wheat and soybeans. Each of the aforementioned are at or near record carryover. In the historical boom/bust cycle of commodities – something must and will change.  Oil prices peaked in the 1970’s at the same time inflation pushed up the value of gold, and then notably collapsed. In July 1973, an ounce of gold could buy 33 barrels of oil. The perceived shortage affected producers of lots of different commodities, causing overinvestment, consequently over-production and ultimately a collapse in values. By January 1974, that same ounce would buy...

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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.

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