War and the Food Fight The intra-EU debate over F2F was bubbling under the surface but like lava flowing out of a rupture in the earth’s crust, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a public fight over its future. French President Emmanuel Macron is using the war to pivot farm policy toward food independence and sovereignty. The Dutch have resurfaced their idea of relaxing pollution standards to allow increased use of animal manure in lieu of the fertilizer shortage. But EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides argues the war reinforces the need for F2F and its goal of achieving sustainability. Some say it is a debate between safety and security, but the problem is that those words have two different sp...
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.
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...