World Perspectives

Recent Policy Analysis

BRICS Grain Exchange; EU Policy Foibles; Yen Implosion

BRICS Grain Exchange Russia is reportedly pushing other BRICS members to use the bloc as a grain exchange in competition with the West. The assertion is that these countries already control 42 percent of the grain trade. Add the new members like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE, plus other...

Factless Nostalgia; Cash is King

Factless Nostalgia There is yet another crusader against the modern agrifood system. This time it is Austin Frerick, who claims authenticity due to his Iowa roots but he is just another Ivy League university (Yale) pontificator hollering from the ivory tower. His book, “Barons,” com...

HPAI Spreads to Mammals; Detected on Dairy Farms

Yesterday, there were two reports made public of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) detections in livestock. First, kid goats in Minnesota, who were in what was a former backyard poultry operation depopulated due to HPAI. That set of circumstances created a situation where there was a hig...

Fixing the WTO; The Winner is Ag

Fixing the WTO The 13th Ministerial Conference last month in Abu Dhabi was yet another failure by the WTO. Now Singapore has proposed a retreat to discuss fundamental fixes needed to stop the long string of failures. Ultimately, the structural problems of the WTO involve one country, one vote a...

Fake Meat Fight; Transatlantic Mutuality; Biofuel Instead of Food

Fake Meat Fight Some western state U.S. Senate Democrats are in tough reelection positions and need to show their distance from President Biden. Following SPS protocols, President Biden recently approved imports of beef from Paraguay. Today the Senate passed a resolution overturning the Preside...

Policy Shorts

India Paradox: A new report using the Modified Mixed Recall Period shows that over the past decade, India matched China’s success in the decade before in eliminating extreme poverty. It has not experienced the same growth in GDP, but its programs and policies made progress. At the same ti...

Trade Negotiation Calculation; UTP = You and Me; Real and Imagined

Trade Negotiation Calculation The WTO’s dispute settlement system and new multilateral trade negotiations fail from the perspective of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden because they put all parties on equal footing. This means the U.S. loses its asymmetric advantage of being an economic and...

President’s FY 2025 Budget Request for USDA

While Congress is finishing the last six appropriations bills for FY 2024 (with a deadline of this Friday), President Biden submitted his FY 2025 budget proposal last week with few changes proposed to USDA’s budget.   Overall, USDA spending under the President’s request i...

Monetary Policy Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will meet this week; interest rates were last raised in July 2023, and during Q4 when rates were held steady markets were hopeful that was a signal that a rate cut would be coming in 2024.   Right now, however, the Federal Funds Futures market...

Cahiers Redux – Politicians Recoil

The Cahiers de doléances [or kaje for short] were the pre-French revolution (1789) lists of societal complaints. The collective disappointments of the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of society too. Nothing has changed. Documents of the time cite the criticisms as: government waste, i...

Crop Program Payment Estimates for 2024

Today, sign-up for the Ag Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs closes; without a new farm bill, no changes have been made to either program. Producers can choose between the price triggered PLC and the revenue triggered ARC. ARC comes in two forms, ARC County (ARC-CO) and...

Big is Bad; Big is Uncertain; Texas is Big

Big is Bad President Joe Biden has a popular proposal, increase taxes on less than 800 billionaires in the U.S. If some people worry about politics for sale, it still takes votes. Sometimes that happens within a class. Divide and conquer. The EU’s proposed relaxation of GAEC production ob...

Squeaky Wheel; EATS Ugly

Squeaky Wheels Farmers in Europe have been on a rampage for months and it is good that EU political leaders are responding to the complaints. Squeaky wheels get the grease because they are high-pitched and shrill, but sometimes grease is not the cure and instead it requires a whole new set of b...

China’s Veiled Data; Unveiled Livestock Emissions

China’s Veiled Data Some agricultural analysts in the West have noted that Chinese data reporting in the sector can go missing, fail to be consistent, or be even outright false in order to better comport with Beijing’s policy mandates. Now the Financial Times notes that the problem...

More Livestock and Poultry Rules Coming from USDA

On 5 March, WPI reported USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released the second of a series of three new Packers and Stockyards Administration marketing rules. Officially, it is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act but is inform...

Bogus Problem; Radicalism Backlash

Bogus Problem Reinforcing the problem asserted by USDA’s political leadership, the Economic Research Service highlighted Census of Agriculture data showing that most losses of farms over the past decade have been small operations, while there was an increase in the largest sized farms. Se...

Biden Dictates Prices; Dictating Standards; Dictating to Meat

Biden Dictates Prices President Joe Biden tried to position himself in last night’s State of the Union address as the bulwark against the rising tide of threats to democracy. Then he dictated to the banking industry how much they can charge for credit card late fees, threatened action aga...

SOTU: Renewing the Focus on Carbon, Conservation, and Capital Gains

In his State of the Union (SOTU) address, President Biden outlined a number of policy priorities with potential impacts on agriculture. Many of them are prior policy goals and initiatives which have already drawn at least caution, if not opposition, from the ag sector. For example, highlights f...

Livestock Roundup: Updates and Highlights

SOTU Tonight is President Biden’s third State of the Union (SOTU) address. It will be interesting to watch how far he goes on food inflation. In 2022, he said, “so many families are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep up with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and so...

Food Wins; Stating the Obvious

Food Wins Commercial food workers hate fast line speeds at meat processors because it makes them work harder and reduces the required number of workers. Animal rights activists hate faster line speeds at meat packers because more animals get slaughtered. The Biden Administration is certainly su...

Katy Bar the Door; Pursuing Food Sovereignty; USMCA Expansion

Katy Bar the Door Malaysia had filed a WTO dispute settlement case against the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, arguing it is prejudicil in limiting the amount of imported palm oil that could qualify under the scheme. Brussels has pursued other ways to limit imports of palm oil from South...

USDA Issues New Livestock and Poultry Contracting Rule

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released the second of a series of three new Packers and Stockyards Administration marketing rules. Officially, it is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act but is informally referred to as the &ldquo...

White House Hypocrisy; Support for Thailand; Green Protectionism; The Real Foe

White House Hypocrisy The economy, and specifically inflation, is one of four top issues dogging President Biden’s reelection campaign and the White House has a solution. It is forming a multiagency “strike force” to curb “unfair and illegal” pricing. Most sellers...

MC13 Unsurprisingly Disappoints

USTR is spinning that progress was made at the WTO’s ministerial in Abu Dhabi that ended over the weekend, claiming progress on revitalizing the dispute settlement process, though arriving at no conclusion. There was an extension of the duty-free provision on ecommerce, though even that h...

BRICS Grain Exchange; EU Policy Foibles; Yen Implosion

BRICS Grain Exchange Russia is reportedly pushing other BRICS members to use the bloc as a grain exchange in competition with the West. The assertion is that these countries already control 42 percent of the grain trade. Add the new members like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE, plus other...

Factless Nostalgia; Cash is King

Factless Nostalgia There is yet another crusader against the modern agrifood system. This time it is Austin Frerick, who claims authenticity due to his Iowa roots but he is just another Ivy League university (Yale) pontificator hollering from the ivory tower. His book, “Barons,” com...

HPAI Spreads to Mammals; Detected on Dairy Farms

Yesterday, there were two reports made public of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) detections in livestock. First, kid goats in Minnesota, who were in what was a former backyard poultry operation depopulated due to HPAI. That set of circumstances created a situation where there was a hig...

Fixing the WTO; The Winner is Ag

Fixing the WTO The 13th Ministerial Conference last month in Abu Dhabi was yet another failure by the WTO. Now Singapore has proposed a retreat to discuss fundamental fixes needed to stop the long string of failures. Ultimately, the structural problems of the WTO involve one country, one vote a...

Fake Meat Fight; Transatlantic Mutuality; Biofuel Instead of Food

Fake Meat Fight Some western state U.S. Senate Democrats are in tough reelection positions and need to show their distance from President Biden. Following SPS protocols, President Biden recently approved imports of beef from Paraguay. Today the Senate passed a resolution overturning the Preside...

Policy Shorts

India Paradox: A new report using the Modified Mixed Recall Period shows that over the past decade, India matched China’s success in the decade before in eliminating extreme poverty. It has not experienced the same growth in GDP, but its programs and policies made progress. At the same ti...

Trade Negotiation Calculation; UTP = You and Me; Real and Imagined

Trade Negotiation Calculation The WTO’s dispute settlement system and new multilateral trade negotiations fail from the perspective of Donald Trump and now Joe Biden because they put all parties on equal footing. This means the U.S. loses its asymmetric advantage of being an economic and...

President’s FY 2025 Budget Request for USDA

While Congress is finishing the last six appropriations bills for FY 2024 (with a deadline of this Friday), President Biden submitted his FY 2025 budget proposal last week with few changes proposed to USDA’s budget.   Overall, USDA spending under the President’s request i...

Monetary Policy Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will meet this week; interest rates were last raised in July 2023, and during Q4 when rates were held steady markets were hopeful that was a signal that a rate cut would be coming in 2024.   Right now, however, the Federal Funds Futures market...

Cahiers Redux – Politicians Recoil

The Cahiers de doléances [or kaje for short] were the pre-French revolution (1789) lists of societal complaints. The collective disappointments of the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of society too. Nothing has changed. Documents of the time cite the criticisms as: government waste, i...

Crop Program Payment Estimates for 2024

Today, sign-up for the Ag Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) programs closes; without a new farm bill, no changes have been made to either program. Producers can choose between the price triggered PLC and the revenue triggered ARC. ARC comes in two forms, ARC County (ARC-CO) and...

Big is Bad; Big is Uncertain; Texas is Big

Big is Bad President Joe Biden has a popular proposal, increase taxes on less than 800 billionaires in the U.S. If some people worry about politics for sale, it still takes votes. Sometimes that happens within a class. Divide and conquer. The EU’s proposed relaxation of GAEC production ob...

Squeaky Wheel; EATS Ugly

Squeaky Wheels Farmers in Europe have been on a rampage for months and it is good that EU political leaders are responding to the complaints. Squeaky wheels get the grease because they are high-pitched and shrill, but sometimes grease is not the cure and instead it requires a whole new set of b...

China’s Veiled Data; Unveiled Livestock Emissions

China’s Veiled Data Some agricultural analysts in the West have noted that Chinese data reporting in the sector can go missing, fail to be consistent, or be even outright false in order to better comport with Beijing’s policy mandates. Now the Financial Times notes that the problem...

More Livestock and Poultry Rules Coming from USDA

On 5 March, WPI reported USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released the second of a series of three new Packers and Stockyards Administration marketing rules. Officially, it is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act but is inform...

Bogus Problem; Radicalism Backlash

Bogus Problem Reinforcing the problem asserted by USDA’s political leadership, the Economic Research Service highlighted Census of Agriculture data showing that most losses of farms over the past decade have been small operations, while there was an increase in the largest sized farms. Se...

Biden Dictates Prices; Dictating Standards; Dictating to Meat

Biden Dictates Prices President Joe Biden tried to position himself in last night’s State of the Union address as the bulwark against the rising tide of threats to democracy. Then he dictated to the banking industry how much they can charge for credit card late fees, threatened action aga...

SOTU: Renewing the Focus on Carbon, Conservation, and Capital Gains

In his State of the Union (SOTU) address, President Biden outlined a number of policy priorities with potential impacts on agriculture. Many of them are prior policy goals and initiatives which have already drawn at least caution, if not opposition, from the ag sector. For example, highlights f...

Livestock Roundup: Updates and Highlights

SOTU Tonight is President Biden’s third State of the Union (SOTU) address. It will be interesting to watch how far he goes on food inflation. In 2022, he said, “so many families are living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep up with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and so...

Food Wins; Stating the Obvious

Food Wins Commercial food workers hate fast line speeds at meat processors because it makes them work harder and reduces the required number of workers. Animal rights activists hate faster line speeds at meat packers because more animals get slaughtered. The Biden Administration is certainly su...

Katy Bar the Door; Pursuing Food Sovereignty; USMCA Expansion

Katy Bar the Door Malaysia had filed a WTO dispute settlement case against the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, arguing it is prejudicil in limiting the amount of imported palm oil that could qualify under the scheme. Brussels has pursued other ways to limit imports of palm oil from South...

USDA Issues New Livestock and Poultry Contracting Rule

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released the second of a series of three new Packers and Stockyards Administration marketing rules. Officially, it is the Inclusive Competition and Market Integrity Under the Packers and Stockyards Act but is informally referred to as the &ldquo...

White House Hypocrisy; Support for Thailand; Green Protectionism; The Real Foe

White House Hypocrisy The economy, and specifically inflation, is one of four top issues dogging President Biden’s reelection campaign and the White House has a solution. It is forming a multiagency “strike force” to curb “unfair and illegal” pricing. Most sellers...

MC13 Unsurprisingly Disappoints

USTR is spinning that progress was made at the WTO’s ministerial in Abu Dhabi that ended over the weekend, claiming progress on revitalizing the dispute settlement process, though arriving at no conclusion. There was an extension of the duty-free provision on ecommerce, though even that h...

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