Shifting trade flows for major agricultural commodities are usually directed by prices and comparative values. When it comes to agricultural trade, it has been said that the direction toward the highest prices is always downhill. It is hard to argue with this truism. In an ideal world, grain will move from where it is in surplus (cheapest) to wherever it is in short supply (highest priced). To prove the point, there have been a number of examples when uncommon comparative values have led to unusual trade flows for major agricultural commodities in recent years.We would contend that the price relationships that have led to most of the unusual trade flows recently are actually rooted in weather. More particularly, they have been the result...
Key Takeaways: Brazil confirmed a Newcastle disease outbreak at a commercial turkey farm in Santa Catarina on 18 October, raising concerns about potential disruptions to poultry exports despite the outbreak being confined to a single facility thus far. Mexico and Malaysia have imposed nationwi...
Yesterday, Alberta held a referendum on whether to begin the process toward independence from Canada. With more than one million votes counted as of early Tuesday morning, around 77 percent supported remaining in Canada, and 23 percent voted to start the process of separation, according to unof...
Mediterranean/Middle East/North Africa/Africa – MEA Region Pakistan’s smaller wheat farmers have been holding protests to complain about the lack of a support price for wheat and the potential expansion of GMO crop production. They also want the reinstatement of PASSCO, the governme...
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.