Moroccan grain production is highly volatile due to frequent droughts, a situation that may become more common elsewhere due to climate change. USDA/FAS reports that this will be a rebound year for Morocco as moisture conditions have improved. The government in Rabat is rolling out new assistance policies though few actually address drought. About 40 percent of the funds will support the use of inputs and 10 percent for farm finances. The rest will be used to lower the cost of imported feed. Investment in water management may not be an option in truly arid regions, but it should become common practice in areas where it is feasible. Alternatively, there is always prayer. Researchers at Yale and the University of Murcia studied (NBER Working...
What You Need to Know Today: Iran says its definition of the Strait of Hormuz is now a “vast operation area” that stretches from Jask to Siri Island. The White House said President Trump did not sign a suspension of the TRQs on beef imports but is “finalizing potential...
If the media headlines and Trump critics are to be believed, President Trump is headed to Beijing this Thursday in a weakened position. China is in control, it has the upper hand, and expectations are very low. These are the same critics that argue against overly simplistic zero-sum analyses in...
Regional News Egypt reiterated plans to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat supplies for the country’s subsidized bread program by 2028, although the target remains ambitious given current production and consumption dynamics. Egypt consumes approximately 21 MMT of wheat annually, with rough...
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.