Half Right = Half Wrong: Economists can probably get science half right. Botanist Ian Crute this week showed that scientists can get economics half right, but then also be half wrong. Speaking to the spring meeting of Britain's Institute of Food Science and Technology, Crute correctly asserted that Europe needs to boost its agricultural productivity. However, his rationale is that import dependence is dangerous since Brazil agrees to exclusively sell food to China, causing shortages in Europe. Sellers do not like to be beholden to a single buyer; Brazil would prefer to have China and Europe trying to outbid one another for its products. Someone needs to advise the scientist that the largest threat to Europe's food security is its macroeco...
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.