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: The U.S. and Iran reportedly agreed to pause hostilities to allow vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz this week (theoretically, at least). There were some rumors of a possible Chinese blockade against Taiwan. Analysts are looking for the largest U.S. 1 June cor...
Developer's Note: Last year, users pointed out differences between the 5-year averages reported in this app and what USDA estimates in its weekly report. The difference exists because WPI calculates average based on the last 5 years of observations for the current week. In cases where obs...
Corn Argentina Argentina's corn harvest continued to advance at a moderate-to-slow pace, constrained by high moisture levels in both the grain and the fields. Harvest delays remain concentrated in the remaining early-planted corn in central and southern Buenos Aires. To date, harvesting has rea...
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.