Wide Divide Ahead of MC 13 All sides remain far apart at a WTO senior officials meeting looking for deliverables at the coming MC12 meeting in Abu Dhabi in February. The Biden Administration is mimicking Trump policies that ignore the majority developing countries’ demands. The 90-plus developing countries want policy space for food security purposes, the permanent ability to stockpile food, and more special and differential policy exceptions. They also want disciplines on domestic subsidies used by rich countries. All these policies are deemed by Washington to be policy-distorting, deviations from free trade principles, or un-reciprocated policy concessions. The divide is so large that the EU says it supports public stock hol...
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...
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.