The daily messaging from Europe is that it is in crisis, and not only does Washington not care, but it is also making things worse. Truthfully, the complaints are met with a smirk by those in U.S. agriculture. Brussels accuses Washington of distorting markets with its Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies for domestic industry, but U.S. farm organizations have confronted the distortions of the Common Agricultural Policy for so many decades that Europe’s complaint seems cynical. Isn’t this the same Europe that targets U.S. IT companies with their own special tax penalties? Washington is correctly criticized for acting in its own interest and ignoring Europe in its calculations, but the same can be said in the other direction...
What You Need to Know Today: Russia rejected calls for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, including a proposal to halt attacks on civilian shipping that could help restore grain flows from Ukrainian ports. Tyson Foods announced plans to permanently close its Joslin, Illinois, beef processing facili...
The big news in the cattle markets yesterday was Tyson Foods’ move to close two more beef plants. One of them, the Joslin, Illinois, plant was shuttered immediately after the announcement. The other, in Eagle Mountain, Utah, is a case-ready plant that does not slaughter cattle. Tyson also...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Wednesday. In July, the CPI rose 0.1 percent, seasonally adjusted, and rose 3.4 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy, or the “core” infla...
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.