India’s rice subsidies were again a complaint today at a hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee. India’s rice exports have increased by a fifth over the past decade with all of it being moved into the export market. New Delhi’s rice subsidies have been part of a long-running complaint India has involved the “Peace Clause” first erected at the Bali Ministerial and claims the subsidies are necessary for food security. However, complainants say the rice is not going into public stockholding for food security but has been exported and below market price levels. India controls half the global rice trade and it is estimated that more than 80 percent of the price is subsidized. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minist...
Key Takeaways: Dry bulk markets are mixed this week with larger vessel classes seeing strong demand from iron ore and coal while Supramax and Handysize rates remain steady. Congestion at the Panama Canal has eased but forward booking slots are showing signs of bottlenecks as draft levels...
Key Takeaways: Ghana’s new law classifies all cocoa plantations as “protected farms,” which carries significant implications for farmers. Chief among these implications is the inability to switch area under cocoa to other crops, even when economic or biological conditio...
Key Takeaways: Corn and soybean prices rallied sharply last week as declining U.S. production expectations collided with strong demand, raising the prospect of tighter supplies and leaving the market with a smaller margin for further yield losses. The USDA’s lower August yield estimates...
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.