Wheat from the Chaff An agricultural meeting in Arkansas last week drew 400 to 500 farmers, a much larger group than expected at harvest time. They vented their angst over low commodity prices, high input costs, and consequently low profitability. One estimate from bankers is that farm bankruptcies could reach 25 to 40 percent. There were the usual boogeymen, the input suppliers and origination companies that are called monopolies. One farm leader is quoted saying, “Seed, chemicals or fertilizer, it’s all in the hands of a few companies that are the only game in town. You want to fix farming? Start a federal investigation on those big companies.” Agribusiness middlemen are typically the target of criticism, and from both s...
What You Need to Know Today: Headlines emerging from negotiations between President Trump and President Xi were relatively limited, with a more substantive announcement expected Monday. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer indicated that additional details related to agricultural trade cou...
The heat of summer is now transitioning into more moderate temperatures, and the next two months have the busiest marketing periods of the year for replacement cattle. Weather always influences the replacement cattle market, and the primary grain belt in the Southern Plains, where many cattle a...
Key Takeaways: Diesel accounts for about 64 percent of U.S. farm fuel spending. For farmers, the pressing question is what a higher price adds to each field operation. Iowa farm diesel averaged $5.50/gallon in September, compared with the $2.89/gallon Iowa State assumed for its February machin...
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.