In a recent interview with Politico, House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) confirmed that he hasn’t decided whether he will run for re-election in 2020. A big factor in his forthcoming final decision: the 2022 farm bill. According to Peterson, "It's getting harder every time to do a farm bill. It's a big commitment. So that's really what my main thing is — if I want to do that. Because then basically I feel like I have a responsibility to see it through.” The chairman is correct – farm bills are difficult. Consider the recent history. Congress passed a farm bill in 1990, but then passed the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act Amendments of 1991, which was then further r...
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.