Pope Francis, whose upbringing was in the anti-elite populism of Argentina, now resides over perhaps the wealthiest institution on earth. Yet, he continues to stab his finger in the eyes of the successful with the latest example being his Laudato Si (Praise Be to You) call for action against climate change. Will He or Won't He? Last week President Obama told House legislators that he would sign a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill even if Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) did not pass, which was intended to discourage Democrats from voting no on TAA to stop TPA. Now he is telling Senate Democrats that he will not sign a separate TPA bill unless he also receives TAA legislation. This is an attempt to not lose the 14 Democrats who voted f...
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.