Although income inequality was heightened by the Great Recession and has statistically tempered, it remains a major policy concern. The outcome of research by McKinsey & Company about its cause will not please everyone. Sweet is Sweet McDonald’s, the world’s largest hamburger fast food chain, announced that it would switch from high fructose corn syrup to sugar in its hamburger buns and also stop using milk produced with rbST supplementation. It included the helpful caveat that there has been “no significant difference shown between milk from RbST-treated and non-rbST-treated cows.” The company could have added that the one scientific consensus is that over-consumption of sweeteners, whether the source is corn, beets or cane, creates...
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...
Key Market Insights Geopolitical Limbo: Geopolitical risk remained a key driver across global commodity markets today. President Trump stated that the Iran memorandum of understanding is not yet final and warned that military action could resume if negotiations fail. Both sides continue w...
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.