World Perspectives

Sinking Ships

Russia says it expects the Black Sea grain corridor agreement to end on 18 July, though it is willing to keep talking. The Russian deputy foreign minister said that even if the agreement with the UN for Ukrainian grain shipments end, Moscow expects its agreement for exporting Russian grain to continue in force. Meanwhile, Ukraine says its Plan B is for continuing grain exports with or without Russian involvement. Kyiv would basically provide insurance or premium coverage for ships carrying the country’s grain. It isn’t clear that under those circumstances any ship owners would be willing to test Russian intents. At the same time, Russia sinking ships loaded with grain would be seen as a despicable and lowly action, especially if...

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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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