As noted yesterday, global wheat consumption has been growing faster than the expansion in production. Sometimes it takes non-agricultural researchers to look at an issue in a different way. Petroleum engineers at the Colorado School of Mines studied global areas where the loss of sub-surface supports are causing the surface areas to collapse. They identified a stretch of Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and the North China Plain where the occurrence of subsidence is particularly acute. However, the areas impacted are not from the removal of underground petroleum reserves but rather the loss of ground water. The issue is particularly problematic for Iran where wheat production year to year is quite volatile. Output dropped 2 MMT this ye...
What You Need to Know Today: Cattle futures extended their sharp selloff Friday as weakening cash cattle prices, deteriorating feedlot profitability, and reduced packer demand continued to weigh on the market. The inability of futures to sustain a rally following last week's bullish Cattle on...
Markets are getting into the Halloween spirit, handing out more tricks than treats. There has been some encouraging news, but it hasn’t been enough to slow the broader slide. Now buyers need to show up with something other than another “Charlie Brown” rock for the bag. Somethi...
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.